MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 2003
SPORTS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 21B
Son's death brings hope to Iraqi's Olympians
By Alan Abrahamson
FSView via U-Wire
Florida State University
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Udai Hussein, who headed Iraq's Olympic Committee, was so feared within his country that the glee many Iraqi sports officials felt shortly after his death was muted by concern that he was somehow still alive.
"We hear it's him — but we are not 100 percent sure about his death," soccer player Jaffer al-Muthafer said. Al-Muthafer, 42, escaped from Iraq in 1979, earned a doctorate in sports management in Germany and returned to Iraq — to see his mother for the first time in 24 years — in mid-May. In recent months, he had been active in an exile group called the Free Iraq Olympic Group.
U. S. military authorities announced weeks ago that Udai Hussein, 39, and his brother Qusai, 37, had been killed in a firefight in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Gunfire, apparently celebratory, erupted around Baghdad late Tuesday as word spread that Saddam Hussein's sons had been killed.
"If it's really him, we will be so very happy," al-Muthafer said. "We will really be able to start a new regime of Olympic sport in Iraq, OK, he's gone. We will start a new life."
Saddam's whereabouts remain unknown.
Five years after Saddam assumed power in 1979, Dai, his
Udai Hussein had sole and unchallenged decision-making power in the realm of sports. Apparently, however, that was not enough. He used the Olympic rings to mark his territory. For instance, he put the rings on the outside of a private hospital of which he'd taken charge.
For years, he ordered beatings and imprisonment of athletes and sports officials, often on a whim. The abuse grew worse — and more arbitrary — after 1996 following an assassination attempt that left him with serious spinal wounds.
Tras Odisho was a senior official in the 1980 Iraqi delegation to the Moscow Olympics and still remains influential on the Iraqi sports scene.
eldest son, took over the Iraqi Olympic Committee. For almost 20 years, he seemed to relish that post over all of his others while, at the same time, perversely ordering the nation's best athletes beaten, tortured and jailed.
sports scene.
"The blackest point in our history was when Udai took over," Odisha said. "Before him we were walking forward. When he took over, we started running backward."
"Iraq is now free from torture. Free from Udai," Amu Baba said. Baba is a 69-year-old legend within Iraq, a star on the Iraqi men's national soccer team a generation ago.
served as secretary-general of the Iraji soccer federation since 1992. Udal Hussein was also president of the soccer federation.
"After games, they called me from Udai's office," Mahmod said. "They would say, 'This player, this player, this player.' I would organize the players. They would sit in a room. Someone would come and take them and jail them."
"I knew they were taking them to jail or beating them but I couldn't do anything." Besim Jamal Mahmod said. Mahmod, 52, has
Laith Hussein, captain of the soccer team since 1996 recalls "10 or 12 times" he was jailed over the years.
"If he would find any small mistake, he would directly punish me," Hussein said. "When I became 16, I started playing for the national team. You can only imagine how I've suffered [because of] Udai. I've seen it all."
In December, the human rights group Indict made the first public allegations of abuse linked to Udai Hussein's control of the Iraqi sports program.
International Olympic Committee officials have said they received no complaints before December. In May, after finding the stories of such abuse credible, the IOC suspended Iraq from the Olympic movement.
Though the Iraqi committee remains suspended, the IOC has been working behind the scenes to get a new committee built and an Iraqi team to Athens for the Summer Games in August 2004. An IOC task force on Wednesday completed a nine-day mission to Baghdad.
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