Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son, was known for his obsession with sex, fast cars, heavy drinking, expensive clothes, torture and murder. Although many people thought it unlikely that Saddam would make him his successor because of his unstable character, Uday was a potent and useful symbol of the regime's terrifying power, writes Alissa Rubin in Baghdad.
Uday and his brother Qusay were shot dead when about 200 US soldiers stormed the house where they wwere hiding in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul last month.
Uday’s lust for expensive cars - some extremely rare - meant he kept as many as 300 at a time in his garages. Some were bought, others were stolen, but in many cases the owners were simply coerced into handing them over.
There were the ordinary ones, Mercedes and BMWs, but also Ferraris, Jaguars, Lamborghinis and Rolls-Royces. A staff of 15 took care of the cars, procuring them, testing them, refurbishing and repairing them.
According to Salim Kasim, one of Uday’s chief mechanics, when he wanted a car, nothing stopped him. "Sometimes he would see a car that he liked as he was driving around and he would call one of us and tell us, ‘I’ve seen such and such a car in this neighbourhood’..."
Kasim would find the car and its owner. "Then we would tell him: ‘Uday wants this car’ or sometimes we would just say ‘someone important wants this car’..." Kasim would either offer cash, or more frequently, a trade - one of Uday’s out-of-favour cars. The exchanges don’t sound exactly equal. For example a few months before the war, Uday spotted a pair of new BMW X5s which he wanted - in exchange he offered the owners two Nissan Safaris.
The greatest reward for Kasim's work wasn't the money - he was paid 116,000 denars a month, now worth less than 100. Rather, it was the perks, Chief among them for a middle-class boy from a family with 10 children was the opportunity to travel abroad. He went to study Cadillacs in Toronto, Rolls-Royce in Birmingham, Mercedes in Stuttgart and Lamborghinis in Bologna.
- Los Angeles Times