Sceptical Iraqis ponder the end of Saddam's sons
Grisly photos of the bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons have been circulated worldwide after they were released by the US in a bid to convince sceptical Iraqis that the feared brothers were dead.
The headshots showed Uday and Qusay Hussein caked in blood and with badly wounded faces after they were killed by US forces in a fierce gun battle on Tuesday.
The pictures were distributed to the media in Baghdad and immediately broadcast around the globe yesterday, including in Iraq and the Middle East.
The Al-Sa’a newspaper held its front and back pages open to publish the pictures this morning.
“This is a US ploy to try to break the spirit of the resistance,” said Jassim al-Robai, a computer engineer who was sitting in a restaurant with two friends in Baghdad. After seeing the images, Al-Robai said he wasn’t convinced that the brothers were killed in a gun battle with US soldiers.
Shaven-headed Uday’s face was scarred and he appeared to have a bullet wound that had destroyed part of his nose and upper lip.
Qusay was photographed on a white sheet splattered with blood. The area around his closed eyelids was severely bruised.
The brothers had grown thick beards since they were last seen in public, possibly in an attempt to disguise themselves.
Two pictures of each of the corpses were released together with photographs of the men when they were alive and X-rays were used to help identify Uday.
The Pentagon hopes the images will quell doubts over American claims that they killed the men in the six-hour gun fight in the northern town of Mosul.
“Now, more than ever, the Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and is not coming back,” US President George Bush said shortly after the pictures were released.
Fears that Saddam and his sons may return to power is believed to have stopped many Iraqis from coming forward with information about the continued resistance against US and British troops.
But the decision to make the photos public had posed a dilemma for the US government after it criticised broadcasters for showing footage of dead and injured American soldiers during the war.
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the pictures had been released in a “dignified way” that did not denigrate the bodies.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey said that the images were vital to prove that the US was telling the truth.
“I think it’s necessary for the world to see and particularly for the Iraqis to see that these two are, in fact, dead, that this is not some ginned-up story from the United States.”
But doubts were quickly raised about whether the images would be enough to convince Iraqis that Saddam’s sons had been killed.
Retired US General Don Shepperd said pictures of corpses killed in battle often created more questions than answers.
He told CNN: “Dead bodies don’t look like live bodies. They are torn apart with a lot of bruising and swelling. It’s not something that totally settles it.”
Jihad Ballout, an executive with the al-Jazeera network said: “The pictures don’t add anything to the case the Americans were trying to make. They muddy the waters a little bit.”
Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister who now sits on the country’s US backed governing council, welcomed the killing of Saddam’s sons and the decision to release the photos.
“People are sceptical in Iraq and I think it is a good idea to present the evidence so that people are sure that they are dead,” he said during a meeting with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in London.
Uday and Qusay’s bodies were identified from dental records and independent identifications by four former regime officials.
Injuries on one of the bodies matched those on Uday’s X-ray records, taken after an assassination attempt in the 1990s crippled him.
The brothers died barricaded in a fortified upper storey section of a villa in Mosul. They are believed to have been killed by 10 anti-tank missiles fired from Humvees.
Qusay’s 14-year-old son, Mustafa, and a bodyguard are also thought to have died in the attack launched by US special forces and troops following a tip off that Saddam’s sons were in the house.
Saddam Hussein and his two sons spent at least a week in Baghdad after its fall, Uday Hussein’s personal bodyguard has revealed.
He told The Times that the three men evaded capture and assassination attempts, passing through safe houses belonging to friends and relatives.
He parted company with his boss about a week after the war when he was handed 1,000 dollars and told he could go home. Uday did not say where he was going, only that the time had come to start the resistance, he told the newspaper.
