Part Two: The Worst Team Owner in FIFA History: Uday Hussein

Robert concludes the story of Uday Hussein, football team owner with guest Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where the president has just found out about that Republican member of Congress, or that member of his administration, not Congress, who's been talking about teleporting places? What's that guy's name? I spaced on him. I just read Trump's reaction where he was like, "I don't know, he's talking about teleporting? What? I gotta get to the bottom of that. I haven't heard it. I haven't heard about that." That's kind of crazy. It was a very like, normal per- it was one of those, every now and then you get those moments where Trump has the same reaction to something as like, a normal person, and it's just like, unaccountably funny. Because he's clearly just hearing about it, and he's like, he's saying, "What? Teleporting?"

• 0:44Speaker 01

  That guy's job, he works at like, DHS now, or something?

• 0:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah, something important.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Some kind of important job, but he could teleport to a Waffle House if he needs to.

• 0:52Robert Evans?

  It's really funny, just seeing him react to it, it's just clear, like, he's, who, what?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Does he know what teleporting even is?

• 1:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Especially because that news was from like, a month ago.

• 1:05Robert Evans?

  I feel like I would know if one of my subordinates was claiming to have teleported to a Waffle House.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  You don't know what I get up to in my spare time?

• 1:14Robert Evans?

  I don't, I don't, but I do know what things you claim to do. I at least pay that much attention. That's a big thing to miss. But hey, he's got a lot of work to do.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  He's gonna get to the bottom of it.

• 1:31Robert Evans?

  Reflecting pond, and the war, and such. You know, Molly, are you ready to talk about Uday Hussein some more? Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys?

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Weird Little Guys, Weird Little Guys, Weird Little Guys.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  I'm excited.

• 1:45Robert Evans?

  Excellent, alright. Let me drink more of my horrible health drink.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, drinking strange colored beverage.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Robert's drinking pond water.

• 1:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's from the reflecting pool. Mmm, orange.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Wait, your drink is also funny colored, Molly?

• 2:00Speaker 01

  No, this is plain water in my favorite cup, which is a blue jar.

• 2:05Robert Evans?

  Oh, that is weird. That's upsetting. I don't believe jars should be blue.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  It's beautiful.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't like that.

• 2:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah, if God wanted jars to be blue, that color would occur in nature.

• 2:18Speaker 03

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• 2:22Robert Evans?

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• 3:26Robert Evans?

  At the time of Iraq's first World Cup appearance, Ude Hussain was president of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, a job he had received at age 20, and head of the Iraqi Football Association. He was also the owner of Al Rashid, Iraq's premier football club. Their team gets to play in the Iraqi Stars League, which is the highest division in the country. And since Al Rashid was the most prominent club and Ude also ran the Olympic team, this meant that from age 20 on, Ude is basically dictator of football in Iraq, right? Like, he's an, even if you're not on his team, if he's not your direct boss, he basically runs how football works in the whole country, right?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  He's the football, he's the football czar.

• 4:07Robert Evans?

  He's the football czar, yes. Saddam made his son the football czar. His son, who, again, does not particularly care for football. This would be a dream job for someone who liked the sport.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  It's not like he grew up playing or like was an aspiring player, like...

• 4:19Robert Evans?

  He does not appear to have any interest in it.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  He just sort of parked him here.

• 4:22Robert Evans?

  It's just kind of the job he wound up with. Like, it's different from all of the other nepotism cases like this in that Uday does not really seem to want to run a football team.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Right, he could have made him a general or put him in charge of like healthcare.

• 4:35Robert Evans?

  He has so many other things he'd rather be doing, but he sucks at all of them.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Infrastructure project, because didn't he get a degree in engineering? He could have made it.

• 4:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, but I don't think that was a real degree, Molly. He didn't go to real school. He has other people doing his classwork for him.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  But he could have at least parked him in infrastructure.

• 4:52Robert Evans?

  You can't, I'm not gonna, like, Saddam was not overall the responsible man, but you could argue that putting Uday in charge of the football team was like the least damage he could do.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  It was harm reduction.

• 5:03Robert Evans?

  Right, yeah. Like, if this guy gets, is involved anywhere in like the power grid, we're gonna have problems. So, we don't know precisely what Uday did to the national team after what he considered to be their failure at the World Cup, but there are suggestions that he began torturing his players around this time. Rahd Hamudi, one of his best players, retired the next year, which is kind of like sometimes seen as a sign that that's probably why, that like Rod retires early, which is really weird, and maybe it's because after this defeat, Uday fucked him up, right?

• 5:36Speaker 01

  It wasn't a chill vibe anymore.

• 5:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I don't want to be in, if this is football, I don't want to be in this kind of football.

• 5:44Robert Evans?

  Uday had his people construct a series of red rooms, what they called red rooms, in Iraqi state sporting facilities. These were places where players who failed during important points in games or training or otherwise irritated Uday could be sent and punished. Depending on the trespass in question, this could vary from mere threats. Uday was particularly known to threaten to chop people's legs off. That was like one of his go-tos for whatever reason.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  You're not gonna get any better at soccer after that.

• 6:09Robert Evans?

  No, that's not gonna improve their, but he never, I don't think he ever did this. This appeared, that was just something he would repeatedly threaten. He may have had some legs broken, though. He would also.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  That will also not improve your soccer playing.

• 6:20Robert Evans?

  Not gonna help. He would also threaten to, like, feed pieces of players to dogs, you know? And he would also use dogs or threaten to use dogs to abuse them.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Don't bring dogs into this.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:33Robert Evans?

  I don't know how often he actually had the dogs maim them because he usually didn't hurt them all that badly. Because again, they are still playing. Um, but when he would beat them like one of these.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  There are ways you can punish people that won't make them less able to play soccer.

• 6:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and I do think most of these are like threats of the crazier stuff because when it talks about the actual beatings that, I mean, it's usually most of the claims that Uday ordered people to do these beatings. Some accounts will say that Uday participated in torture. Some accounts will say he never did. I don't actually know which is is true, but I think he generally, at least generally, these are people who are working for him doing the the torture. And they're administering, they're usually the way they're physically punishing these guys is whipping them with electric cables. Right? Um, like, that's kind of the the go to physical punishment, at least initially here.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Why not make them run laps?

• 7:21Robert Evans?

  They do that too, but that's not really torture. That's just like normal workout stuff. I mean, you can do it in a way that's abusive, certainly, but that's not, that's not going to satisfy a guy like Uday. Um, he is alleged and there's, I mean, they did find, uh, you know, the, uh, like the the Iron Maiden? That thing where it's like this big metal coffin you put someone in that's got spikes on the inside that you can screw into them? They did find one of those at a facility that was supposed to have been Uday's. Like, there are accusations that he was really into that, like specifically into like old timey torture techniques. Again, it's kind of hard to tell how much of this is literally true because I don't, I've never run any accounts of him actually

• 8:02Robert Evans?

  that are of any detail of him iron maiden-ing somebody to death. Maybe he just had one because it looked scary.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Right, he was just an enthusiast, he was a hobbyist.

• 8:10Robert Evans?

  He may have iron maiden people to death who weren't on the team. I just haven't heard of him doing that to team members, you know? Um, or maybe, yeah, maybe he never got around to it yet, you know, it's like his unpainted models.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  It was for show.

• 8:21Robert Evans?

  Or whatever in the corner, right? Um, because creativity is kind of what gives life its zest, Uday took to experimenting, or at least having his torturers experiment uh, over time as the early methods of violence did not improve the team's functioning. He found that in time, uh, whipping people bloody with an electric cable was fun, but what really took things up a notch. Was afterwards, if you would throw them into like a pit filled with sewage, you know, then you could really mess people up. They get these horrific infections and stuff. And that makes it better soccer. Yeah, that definitely helps that helps their game is giving them fucking staff infections.

• 9:02Robert Evans?

  The red rooms, I think as far as I can tell, probably got their name, both for like the obvious reason and also as a reference to the red cards that are thrown out in football games when a player makes like a penalty. And if you if you're not aware of sports, right? A penalty shot is one of those moments in competitive sports where everything comes down to the actions like a single player, right? If you get to take a penalty shot, no one else is kind of, it's just, can you make this shot, right? As an individual player? This means that one person is to blame if a penalty shot is missed. And because people who fail on the Iraqi football team get beaten and tortured, most members of Al Rashid started refusing to take penalty shots because you can't be like, oh, but that wasn't my fault. It was this guy or it was I didn't get the ball in tight, right?

• 9:48Robert Evans?

  Like, everyone watched you fail to make that shot. And so nobody's willing to do it. Eventually, they only have like three guys on the team who are willing to actually take penalty shots, and he's our brave men. One of them was Abbas Rahim Zaire. He told The Guardian, "Many of the footballers refused to even touch the ball, but then we realized that if no one accepted, we would all be punished." So Zaire basically agrees to be one of the guys who will make penalty shots so that they don't all get tortured. That's the only way to deal with that. In one game, Zaire attempts a penalty shot and misses. Two days later, when the team returned home to Baghdad, he was ordered to show up at the Olympic Committee headquarters, which had become Uday's lair, complete with a basement,

• 10:31Robert Evans?

  torture chamber. Per The Guardian, "He was blindfolded and taken away to a prison camp for three weeks. He shrugged. End of story." That's him like talking to the reporter there. That he doesn't want to talk about having to the prison camp. I do have some details from other people, what happens at the prison camps.

• 10:49Robert Evans?

  So getting a penalty was just as bad, if not worse than failing. At a penalty shot, right? If you fail at a shot, you're gonna get tortured because you didn't make a point when you could have. If you make, if you, if you do a penalty and the other team gets to make a penalty shot, you're gonna be punished for giving them, you know, that point, basically, right?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Being the goalie has got to be a, just the worst position on the team.

• 11:10Robert Evans?

  Position on the team under Ude.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Goalie is one of the only positions on the team where, again, like, it's like the penalty shot where it's on you. You fail, you let the ball in.

• 11:20Robert Evans?

  There's a lot of opportunities for you to be the guy who gets the blame. That's obviously not fair, but like, that's how it's gonna be looked at by fucking Ude.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  I wouldn't wanna be, I wouldn't wanna be Ude's goalie.

• 11:30Robert Evans?

  I would not wanna be the goalie under Ude Hussein. So that piece in The Guardian describes what happened to Yasser Abdul Latif, former team captain in 2000 after he was accused of hitting the referee during a club match in Baghdad. Quote, "He was taken to the Radwania prison camp on the edges of the capital and confined to a cell two meters square with a tiny window high on the wall. His head and eyebrows were shaved and he was stripped to the waist. He was in order to perform press ups for two hours. Three guards flogged him with links of electric cables, spelling off when their arms grew tired. The torture continued in two hour sets with an hour's break in between, and the beatings grew more savage as Latif tired. The only relief, if it can be called that, came when he was led outdoors into the winter cold and doused in freezing water."

• 12:15Speaker 01

  I don't know that that's, I mean, you shouldn't put your hands on the ref.

• 12:18Robert Evans?

  Does that help with their football?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  You shouldn't put your hands on the ref. But I don't think that's a fair punishment.

• 12:24Robert Evans?

  I think, obviously, it's bad to put your hands on the ref. That seems outside of the, yeah, yeah, yeah, a red card, maybe, perhaps not.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe a five-match ban, depending on what you did to the ref.

• 12:35Robert Evans?

  For days in a cell. Yeah, maybe extreme.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, did he rejoin the team after this, or was that kind of it for him?

• 12:43Robert Evans?

  No, no, he stays back on the team. It is, it takes more, he notes, he noted in his interview, first off, he's in that prison camp for two weeks. He goes through this for two straight weeks. And it's more than, it takes. Well, first, it takes a month before he can even sleep on his back again. But yes, after he recovers, he goes back to play for the team. And this is what he said, because the Guardian asks him, basically what you did. They're like, you went back? And he says-

• 13:08Speaker 01

  I guess he didn't have a choice.

• 13:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's what he says. "I never had any choice. They threatened me. If I didn't participate in the team, they said they would beat me again and again and consider me an enemy of the regime, and that would mean death." So again, he doesn't have-

• 13:20Speaker 01

  I guess he was really good at soccer. Unfortunately for him.

• 13:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, it's also probably hard to find, like, after a while, you would stop wanting other people to know you were good at soccer in Iraq.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  You would not put your kids in youth soccer, for sure.

• 13:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I might avoid that for my kids.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  You're not playing big up games.

• 13:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So the power and money Ude got from his position and from being able to torture people were far more of his passion than, you know, football. Most people who knew him will note that he wasn't a big sports guy and hadn't cared about the national team until Saddam told him, "Hey, you can win my approval if you avoid fucking that up." The Guardian's reporting notes that in order to burnish his team's performance, he, quote, "kept a private torture scorecard with written instructions on how many times each player should be beaten on the soles of his feet after a particularly poor showing." And you'll find allegations like that repeated by numerous sources, where some differ as in whether or not Ude participated in the torture himself or was just a fastidious manager. Now, the team coach for most of this time was Emmanuel Baba Dawud,

• 14:22Robert Evans?

  better known as Ammo Baba. He's a fucking cool guy, Ammo Baba. Like Ammo, like bullets, Baba.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Cool nickname.

• 14:29Robert Evans?

  Now, yeah, very cool nickname. Ammo was a former footballer himself. He'd been a star in the 1950s during the Iraqi team's early days of glory. And he became the team coach in 1978. Again, when I said probably the reason why the team performed so well, Ude's first couple of years in charge is because a better, a really good coach had started a couple of years earlier.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Because he's letting a professional do it.

• 14:50Robert Evans?

  Right. Baba Ammo starts working there in 1978. By the time Ude comes in, like, four to five years later or whatever, he's gotten the team, like, into a really good position, right? So because Ammo is so clearly good at his job, he is beloved by Iraqis. And that means he's one of the- Few people with some clout, he's able to resist Uday on occasion without getting murdered. Right? Because Uday can't quite murder him in public, right?

• 15:15Speaker 01

  You can't mess with a good thing.

• 15:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and they do argue a lot. Uday doesn't know shit about football, so the two have like screaming fights with some regularity. Sophie's gonna show you a picture of Ammo Baba, by the way. This guy looks fucking awesome.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, look at him in his fucking Puma. He's wearing his fucking Puma tracksuit.

• 15:33Robert Evans?

  He's clearly, yeah, Puma tracksuit, fucking like black, dark Einstein, almost styled hair, like he's so cool looking. I can't believe he's not smoking. He looks like he should be smoking.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  What a fantastic. That's Grandpa Munster.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  What a fantastic nose this man has.

• 15:51Robert Evans?

  He's got an amazing nose. He's so cool looking. I love him.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  I love him so much. I'm so sad that he had to deal with Uday.

• 15:57Robert Evans?

  You're gonna love Ammo more, because Ammo Baba's fucking cool. Uh, here's how Justin Sherman describes Ammo for these football times. Quote, Baba's outspoken nature against Uday would garner admiration and cult-like devotion from many Iraqis, effectively shielding him from being killed because of the unrest it would unleash through the streets. Still, his lofty status could not always protect him, as Uday once personally beat him in front of 50,000 spectators at the Al Shab International Stadium. He talked nonsense, Baba recalled about Uday. I told him to go to hell. I said he knew nothing about football. How did I survive? Because the people loved me. So cool.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  So, you know, I've been watching the World Cup, and I keep telling my husband, you know, like, because one of the first matches we watched, there were like an insane number of red cards, like a record number of red cards. And I was saying like, it's kind of, it's kind of more fun. It's a little bit more fun when it gets a little, when it gets a little testy, you know, people are pushing the shot a little bit. I take it back. I take it back. I don't want to see that. I don't want to see the manager of the team flog the coach on the field.

• 16:56Robert Evans?

  Flog the coach in front of 50,000 people? And Ammo basically just stands there, and is like, alright, if you're gonna beat me, just beat me, you know, like, he's so fucking cool.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  You're the one who looks stupid.

• 17:07Robert Evans?

  This guy is so cool. I cannot exaggerate how chill Ammo Baba seems.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  I mean, that's the right attitude to bring to the beating. That's the right attitude to bring to the beating. Like, you're the one who looks foolish here, bud.

• 17:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you're the one who's losing control and being an asshole in public, you know?

• 17:24Robert Evans?

  So, uh, by the way, I also figure since we just saw Mo Baba, I should show you a picture at this point of the big guy Saddam Hussein and his oldest son Uday together. This is from around the time we're talking about.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Father and son.

• 17:35Robert Evans?

  This would be like the eighties somewhere around then. Yeah, they're handsome guys. Look at them. Look at them.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Look, they've got matching, matching mustaches.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, mustaches are good.

• 17:44Robert Evans?

  Honestly, Uday's is a little whiter than his dad's.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  You know, it's a little exaggerated. It's kind of like, it's a little much. I think he's trying to make his dad proud.

• 17:52Robert Evans?

  You know, you can definitely tell Saddam's the novelist of the two, you know? He has that novelist's eyes.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  I like that shirt, though.

• 18:00Robert Evans?

  Oh, yes, Saddam's. It looks great.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:02Robert Evans?

  He always looked good. God, he's handsome.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I just want to go on record that I do not think Saddam's handsome.

• 18:10Robert Evans?

  It's just a joke. I, so there's this, yeah, no, I, I, I won't tell that Saddam Hussein story yet. One day, one day. So that same year, Uday made what many regime watchers would argue was his biggest mistake. This is 1988. So Kamal Hannah Jajo was Saddam Hussein's official food taster and valet. This is basically his body man, you know? Jajo's the guy Saddam always wants in the room with him, right? And if, when you're Saddam, that means something, right? This guy's a dude who has like a high official rank, but he gets a lot of time with the boss and the boss genuinely cares about him. So Jajo is about as close to Saddam as anyone can be and arguably closer to him than his

• 18:53Robert Evans?

  fuck up fail son Uday because Saddam doesn't want Uday around him all day, right? He wants Jajo in the room.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  This is the Iraqi equivalent of that young woman who prints off articles from the internet for Trump.

• 19:04Robert Evans?

  That's exactly right. And just as Trump clearly likes her more than all, both of his sons put, both of his older sons put together, um, Saddam clearly likes Jajo a lot more than Uday, which may have been why Uday hated him. So the following story that I'm about to relate took place during a party at an island resort after a dinner to honor the wife of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president at the time. So there's this, you know, big diplomatic event between Iraq and Egypt and they're having a party at this island resort and that's when this all happens. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote now from 2003.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Nothing good happens on an island.

• 19:37Robert Evans?

  Nothing good happens in an island party, resort party, no. With the president of Egypt and Iraq, no.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  It's not gonna be, something weird's going on already.

• 19:45Robert Evans?

  Something bad's gonna happen. So this is from a 2003 LA Times article. According to the most widely accepted account, a large group of Hussein's bodyguards had gathered for their own party on the island while the state dinner was taking place. They were firing weapons in the air in celebration, and Zajo reportedly refused Uday's order to stop. So Uday killed him. Furious, Hussein jailed his eldest son and vowed to prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. It was only after a letter purportedly written by Zajo's father and published in the state media asked that Uday be forgiven, that Hussein freed him and sent him to Switzerland less than 60 days after his imprisonment. So this is when a lot of people will say Uday stops being the heir apparent.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Because he killed his dad's favorite friend.

• 20:29Robert Evans?

  He killed his dad's best buddy, yeah.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:32Robert Evans?

  Kind of his dad's surrogate son.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  That'll do it.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  That will, that will mess it up for you. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of psychology there, right? Like, he just wants his dad to love him and he can't.

• 20:42Robert Evans?

  Yep, yep, yep. And he wants to follow his dad's footsteps.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  This sort of this equivalent of the Secret Service, right? Like, they're getting drunk and using their weapons improperly.

• 20:53Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah, just shooting off guns, absolutely.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  You know, we're all the same all the world over. Sounds just like the American Secret Service.

• 21:00Robert Evans?

  If I was the elite guard, or hell, if I was like the president at a fucking big political event like this, I would want to shoot off guns afterwards, just to blow off some steam, you know? They can't stop you as the president.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  It's just nice to know that people are the same everywhere.

• 21:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah. That is something we haven't had happen yet as a country, is like, at a diplomatic event, the president just going to a Secret Service guy and being like, "Give me, give me a machine gun. I just want to, I just want to fire off a few rounds into the dirt."

• 21:26Speaker 01

  We don't know that doesn't happen at Camp David.

• 21:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I, yeah, yeah, I, I'd love to see it. Why not? America's not doing so, so hot. We could use something lighter, something fun. The president firing a machine gun blindly at a diplomatic dinner in Switzerland, you know? Why not? I guess the Swiss probably don't want that to happen. Speaking of the Swiss, as punishments go, being forced to live in Switzerland with millions of dollars isn't that bad, right? Today's not a terrible situation. I would love that punishment, yes.

• 22:01Robert Evans?

  I think we'll all take exile in Switzerland with millions of dollars as a punishment if it's on the table.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Take me.

• 22:08Robert Evans?

  But one of the downsides is Swiss law doesn't really care if you're some two-bit dictator's son, right? Maybe if you're like a high-grade dictator's son, you can get away with a lot in Switzerland.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  I mean, how many millions?

• 22:20Robert Evans?

  But Ude's saying isn't. You gotta have a lot more than a few million, right? If you want to get that kind of preferential treatment, you know? You're not as Ude. You're not gonna walk around breaking Swiss laws without consequences unless you pay some pretty hefty bribes at a high level.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  You can't be serial raping.

• 22:36Robert Evans?

  And shortly after moving to Geneva. No. And in Ude's case, even it's, I mean, thankfully, it's not that bad, although, who knows? But like, not long after he moves to Geneva, he gets into a fistfight with a cop at a bar? And his dad makes him come home and marry the daughter of one of his friends.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Fistfight with a cop in a bar? I mean, you're just making him sound relatable.

• 22:58Robert Evans?

  This does sound cool. And you know who else got into a fistfight with a cop at a bar recently?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Certainly not me.

• 23:05Robert Evans?

  Nope, but the sponsors of our podcast did.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:09Robert Evans?

  Each and every one of them. Whoever comes up to advertise next on this show just staggered out of a bar with the blood of a police lieutenant on their hands. And it might be the next ad, the Portland Police Bureau or the Washington State Highway Patrol. We don't know. Whoever it is, they just assaulted an officer.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 23:26Speaker 05

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• 24:28Speaker 05

  I'm Melissa Jelton, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her?, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety.

• 24:46Speaker 05

  Stories of survival.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead.

• 24:55Speaker 05

  Cases that everyone else called closed.

• 24:58Speaker 06

  They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence.

• 25:02Speaker 05

  These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  No child should ever experience that. And we were babies.

• 25:14Speaker 06

  She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it, and he got a year.

• 25:20Speaker 05

  You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Listen to What Happened to Her? on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:33Speaker 07

  If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Dario Hamad, Alex Carr, Fei-Fei Li, Palmer Lucky. Because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed.

• 26:05Speaker 05

  Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's up to us.

• 26:15Speaker 07

  But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans? They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, whose imagination do we want to live in? This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. Listen to The Builders on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 26:49Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So Uday's forced home. His dad makes him marry the daughter of one of his buddies. And this is not a love match, to say the least. Uday's wife leaves him after just a few months complaining that he'd started beating her. So when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. Yeah, yeah. Oh, shocking. Yeah, I don't have any trouble believing that. When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, Uday was not in a great position within the regime. He's not super high up. And some sources I've read will say that Uday's body double at the time was made to like pose at the front in and around combat positions to make it look like Uday was participating and stuff. But that said, those, most of those accounts come from the body double that we heard from earlier. Latif Yaya.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  The guy making things up.

• 27:34Robert Evans?

  The guy making things up a lot, right? Now, I don't, Uday doesn't, I don't have any evidence that he did anything meaningful during the invasion either. I'm not saying that, just like Latif exaggerates and lies constantly. Now, if you, as I mentioned earlier, grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, you know that Saddam Hussein was infamous for his use of body doubles. This was a cause of much hilarity in popular media at the time and contributed somewhat, I think, to the sheer glee with which Hollywood movies post Desert Storm loved to feature characters dressed like Saddam Hussein. You know, think of fucking The Big Lebowski, right? Fucking a Saddam impersonator shows up in that. There's like a weird amount, number of like Sadams that you run into in like 90s movies and some early 2000s movies.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Very much a part of our consciousness.

• 28:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and some of it's just, you know, Saddam Hussein, Desert Storm had happened. He was like a major bad guy in the American public consciousness. But some of it, I think, is all these gleeful stories of Saddam look-alikes definitely, I think, fueled some of that. Now, I want to do something, a dedicated thing on Saddam and his body doubles because there's shockingly little real evidence behind a lot of the claims about his body doubles. Again, I don't doubt that he had people impersonate him for security purposes, but yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Is this what really sort of seeded into our consciousness? This idea that all, all of these world leaders have all these bodies? It's like, it's like a big Quedon psychosis, right? That all these people have body doubles.

• 28:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Is that where this comes from?

• 28:59Robert Evans?

  Those, that those body doubles are people living like whole lives as this person and like they, they have all these restrictions in place and they're constantly watched as opposed to like, well, whenever we're traveling with the president, we make sure there's a couple of guys who kind of look like him from behind. If you like drape like a coat over him. So if we think there might be a shooter, we can like run this guy out who looks like the president and maybe they take a shot at him, but it's just guards, you know, and then we can deal like, I think that happens a lot, stuff like that probably, but the, the crazy stories you hear about these like harems of body doubles of Saddam, these like gangs of them, I think are mostly fantasies.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Just like a Love Island mansion full of Sadams.

• 29:36Robert Evans?

  Right, right. Yeah. Too many Sadams. Now, Uday is also famously alleged to have had a body double. And by that, I mean, he is alleged to have had several, but the guy everybody knows is Latif Yahya. And Latif's claim is that he knew Uday in grade schools, we talked about, and they, people had commented how much they looked alike. And then, you know, years go by and in 1987, Yahya has been drafted and he's fighting in the Iran-Iraq war and he's somewhere near the front in 1987, when he gets recalled to Baghdad and he finds himself sitting in a palace. Uh, in Yahya's book, The Devil's Double, here's how he described a meeting with Uday Hussein, that again, probably didn't happen. He tells his old school buddy

• 30:17Robert Evans?

  that he wants to take him away from the front and make him his fideh, uh, which is a word that means double. Uh, although per Yahya's book, a fideh is more than a mere double. A fideh is everything. In Arabic culture, a fideh means disciple, a fighter and a partisan, a serf who must always be prepared to give his life up for his master. I have seen so many different news articles quote him saying this. I don't think that, I haven't found any other writing about a fideh, at least not under the way it's spelled in this. I, I've never heard of this concept. I think he's kind of making it up that this is like a prominent concept in Arabic culture. I haven't found that, at least.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  If he knows he's speaking to an audience that doesn't speak any Arabic language and this was before it was easy to Google things. He could just be making it up and assuming you'll never know.

• 31:06Robert Evans?

  I'm not gonna say I've like asked anybody who would be a comprehensive, but no one I've talked to was familiar with this concept. And I couldn't just Google around, find, Googling or looking, searching around, find anyone but Yahya, talking about this apparently universal Arabic social role of the Fideh, which he's like, every, all of our great kingdoms had this. And it's like, I don't know, man. Really? Because you're the only one talking about it that I'm finding. Maybe I'm missing a bunch of shit because it's just not written in English. But like, I did try to account for that. And I didn't run into fucking anything. So whatever. When he was released, Yahya says, he was given a choice. Serve Uday as doppelganger or have his family murdered and his sisters raped. Per an article in The Independent.

• 31:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah, to give you an idea on how this, this, this story that's fanciful is reported on by credible seeming papers, here's how The Independent, in an article by Jerome Taylor, reported on all this. After rounds of plastic surgery, the transformation was complete. Mr. Yahya said that between 1987 and 1991, he was witness to some of Uday's worst excesses. His prowls through Baghdad at night, looking for women to rape, his drug abuse, violent outbursts, and penchant for torture. He also claims to have survived 12 attempted assassinations. Mr. Yahya thought of escaping only after Uday, angry that a girlfriend had started to openly flirt with a doppelganger, tried to shoot him. Mr. Yahya claims he fled to Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and later to Austria with the help of the CIA. Again, I don't have

• 32:34Robert Evans?

  any like outside evidence other than this guy's claims of any of that, any of that shit.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  I would need, I would need a second source on some of that.

• 32:43Robert Evans?

  I would need a second source, and there just isn't. His, and there are a couple of journalists who like, looked into this and tried to, and like, everyone who's investigated this has been like, I have found no evidence to corroborate any aspect of his story. That said, his story was eventually-

• 32:58Speaker 01

  And it's like, you don't need to embellish. We know he's torturing, we know he's raping.

• 33:01Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  You don't need to spice it up. You don't need to spice it up.

• 33:05Robert Evans?

  But this guy, I mean, there was money in it for Yahya, I think. But I don't know fully why he did what he did, although that's my guess, because he was eventually portrayed in a film adaptation of his book, also called The Devil's Double. Dominique Cooper played Uday Hussein and Latif Yahya. So.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. We got, we only need one actor. Of course.

• 33:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Dominique, right. Of course. That makes it efficient.

• 33:29Robert Evans?

  Foreign press, press loved talking to Latif in the years between the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion, and he always wove a good yarn. But he was also obviously lying about a ton of it. And again, I will say for his part, he always says, I was actually against the Iraq war. He was, he would say, I never wanted the US to invade because I knew that would make things worse. He just, I think, was trying to monetize off the fact that Saddam Hussein was like the famous bad guy in Western society for a while, right?

• 33:54Speaker 01

  And the network news loves to have a guy on that will always say yes and will always say something crazy.

• 34:00Robert Evans?

  Exactly, exactly. So, British journalist Ed Caesar finally actually interrogated Yahya in the early 2000s after years of him making these claims with not with minimal pushback. And he found no evidence to support Yahya's claims to have worked as a body double for Uday. Again, there, yeah, there is some evidence that he was tied to some regime attempts to maybe like, there's some sketchy stuff people have alleged he may have been involved in. We'll talk about that all at a later day. What I want to talk about next is everyone's favorite US military adventure, the Gulf War, right? So, 1990, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, and the subsequent international response led to the United States is a disaster for

• 34:45Robert Evans?

  Saddam's military and regime. Uday had to endure the years of sanctions that followed, although he would ultimately profit mightily as a result of the, some of the different like, programs that were put in place. I think oil for food is one of them. Like, he's, like, like everyone who's tight and high up in the regime, going to take advantage of all of this to make money for himself. But this isn't like a great time for him or his dad or his brother, right? The, the immediate years after the Gulf War, things are very messy for the Hussein. It's not as bad they're gonna be, right? Now, Uday's personal situation within the regime is worsened by the fact that as the 90s went on, it's become increasingly clear to everyone that Qusay is going to be the

• 35:27Robert Evans?

  heir apparent, right? That Saddam's now, Saddam's, he's, he's younger enough that Saddam learned from his mistakes. He raised a somewhat gentler son, because he still does some violent stuff, but not as like uncon- Controllably and not in a way that's like bad and dangerous for the regime, you know?

• 35:43Speaker 01

  And learning, learning that he's been passed over is definitely going to improve his behavior, right?

• 35:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he's gonna be a lot nicer guy now.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  He's gonna be normal now.

• 35:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Kusay is just kind of like a much steadier guy and he's also like a planner, right? While, while Uday is torturing soccer players, Kusay is taking control of Iraq's intelligence apparatus and the Republican Guard, its elite internal paramilitary force.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  That seems like more productive.

• 36:07Robert Evans?

  It gives you an idea of like how Saddam views his sons, that he's like, yeah, you can keep running the football team that sucks now since you took over. But Kusay gets like

• 36:17Speaker 01

  The CIA, basically.

• 36:18Robert Evans?

  Basically, yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Oh man, so he's still got soccer though, like through the 90s.

• 36:23Robert Evans?

  He's still got, he's still got football, soccer, yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  So he's, maybe he's, maybe he's getting better at it, right? Like, I mean, he didn't start out knowing anything about soccer, but he's been in charge of soccer for like 20, 20 years. Did he ever learn?

• 36:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Is he getting better?

• 36:37Robert Evans?

  There's not much evidence of that. There's not much evidence of that, right? Now, because I am not a rube, I'm always careful when trying to validate stories of horrors in Saddam's Iraq. Not because it wasn't replete with them, but again, because of all the disinformation that's out there. In part by like angry dissidents who wanted to encourage US intervention against Saddam. One reason that I feel comfortable saying all of the specific stuff with the football team actually happened is that the sources on this are a ton of Iraqi pro soccer players. Like a bunch of their best former football players have all talked about being tortured by Uday Hussein. So I assume this is all true, right? I can't give any other reason they would really want to be doing that in this case.

• 37:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, there's some physical people who had injuries and stuff like, and, and torture equipment was found in a lot of the, like, we, we found like physical evidence of this stuff.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Teacher who allegedly died in an unnamed way at an unnamed time. This is somebody saying, this happened to me and here is my scar.

• 37:34Robert Evans?

  Yes, exactly, exactly. We're gonna hear from them now. So one of these players was Sharar Haydar Mohammed Al Hadithi. He was a top level player in Iraq who did well enough that he got to represent the country international on several special teams, including during the 1988 Olympics. Per an article I found in an archive from the September 11th, 1999 edition of The Mirror, quote, "He says he was hit repeatedly."

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Interesting name.

• 37:59Robert Evans?

  The nine eleven here is incidental, but this is also 1999. So this is really before, this is before the post nine eleven kind of like drive up to the war in Iraq too, which is why I, one of the reasons I I'm interested in this source. So, uh, quote, "He says he was hit repeatedly on the soles of his feet, dragged on his bare back through a gravel pit and then made to jump into a tank of sewage so that the wounds would become infected. He was deprived of sleep and fed bread and water." So yeah, that's fucking, again, that's a claim by a specific guy of a specific torture that was done to him. Yeah. And that's fucking nightmarish, right? Because of the team not doing well in that year's Olympics.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  And again, that's not gonna make you any better at soccer.

• 38:38Robert Evans?

  Not gonna help, not gonna help. Sewage in open wounds rarely makes football. I, I know that there are some, I mean, the Patriots famously, uh, get a lot of sewage in their open wounds, but that's just because they're the Patriots. You know, that's not best practices for anyone else.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  I mean, Tom Brady thinks drinking water prevents sunburns. He might think that sewage in an open wound makes you run faster.

• 39:01Robert Evans?

  Get Brady doing that. So in 1993, Iraq's premier team lost a friendly match against Jordan. If you know Uday at this point, you know, the man absolutely did not believe in friendly matches. He had four players, including Sharar, who we've just heard from, forced into a van and driven to a prison camp. Here's how Sharar describes his time in soccer prison. Quote, "Sharar says a favorite trick of one sadistic prison guard was to tell them to catch a mosquito in their cells. When half anesthetized with fatigue from lack of sleep, they held the insect out for inspection. Their captor would mock them, saying, "But that's a male mosquito, you fools. I want a female one. Start looking again." It went on, day after day, night after night. One player had a nervous breakdown.

• 39:42Robert Evans?

  Others were injured and others, like Sharar, quit football and fled abroad." So yeah, that's pretty bad. That's, that's, you know, creative. I'll give that specific prison guard that. I haven't heard of that one yet, you know? We have to respect ingenuity here, don't we?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  But you know, over the course of managing this team all these years, he's not actually interested in getting better, is he? He just likes doing, because at this point, he knows that this is not improving. This is not improving the team.

• 40:11Robert Evans?

  You would think, right?

• 40:11Speaker 01

  He just likes, I think he just likes doing the torture, to be honest.

• 40:15Robert Evans?

  I think he's just, I think he thinks, yeah, that may be it. Or maybe he thinks

• 40:18Speaker 01

  I think he knows this isn't improving the team.

• 40:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he's got it at this point.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Nobody else is doing it this way. You know, the top, they're not putting Ronaldo in a cell.

• 40:28Robert Evans?

  No, and at this point, he's, he's kind of crashing out as a person. He knows he's not the heir apparent anymore. Um, he's doing a lot of drugs. He's, you know, having mood swings in part, probably as a result of that. He's being violent and he's murder committed several times. There are several murders he's accused of throughout this period too, just at like parties. So this is a guy who's kind of regularly spinning out of control. And I think to your point, Molly, I don't think he's focusing much on whether or not this is making the team better. I think this has just become an outlet for his anger. Like, he gets to go punish the team when he's pissed. Yeah. Yeah. He just likes it now.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  These are just his little toys.

• 41:04Robert Evans?

  It appears weird to say my favorite, but my favorite soccer themed account of nightmarish crimes against humanity comes from an account given by Uday's former press secretary Abbas Janabi. After Janabi fled Iraq, he told reporters about what had happened after the team failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. Uday presented them with a concrete ball and made them kick it for hours upon hours at a time.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 41:28Robert Evans?

  Just awful guy. Again, he does not care about the team at this point. This is just about lashing out, right?

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Christ, man.

• 41:36Robert Evans?

  In 1995, Uday had another, we'll call it incident. He was at yet another party. He was drunk and probably on Molly or coked up. He was on Molly a lot in the nineties or, you know.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Not me.

• 41:49Robert Evans?

  So, no, no, no, no MDMA, you know, at the, yeah, yeah. Uh, so when one of his kin folks gave a toast and mocked Uday's speech impediment, Uday, as the story goes, just started blasting. Yeah, he just starts shooting, right? So this guy like makes fun of him and Uday just pulls a gun and opens fire with an automatic weapon and doesn't stop shooting until.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  What the hell kind of drugs was the other guy on that you would make fun of Uday's speech impediment?

• 42:14Robert Evans?

  I know, right?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Cause you know.

• 42:16Robert Evans?

  You would have to think you'd stop at this certain point. He just shoots people periodically. Maybe you're just so fed up with the fucker, right? That you just can't hold it in anymore. He must've been pretty annoying.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  The vibe of this party had to have been awful.

• 42:32Robert Evans?

  I don't think it was a good party, even, even though Uday's on fucking ecstasy. So as the story goes, he just, he just starts firing and he is six people. He killed six people. Uh, all of the dead are supposed to have been bodyguards, but his relative who had made fun of him was badly injured. So yeah, that's the kind of guy he is. Uh, Uday was also brutal to any other Iraqi team. Yeah. In a bad mood while fucking rolling. Um, now Uday was also brutal to any other Iraqi team that had the misfortune to play Al Rashid. And I'm going to quote again from George Woodward's article in Tribune. "Special punishments were reserved for those who committed offenses against Al Rashid. For example, injuring one of their players. For such an offense, Al Zahr, defender

• 43:14Robert Evans?

  Abir Jamal, was arrested. He was taken to the stadium where the match had been played and in front of the Al Rashid players sentenced to 65 lashes. Such is the fate of anyone who defies football and does not respect the rules of fair play," said the local police chief.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Wait, so his team would have to always win because you're gonna let him win?

• 43:34Robert Evans?

  Well, I think that doesn't happen a lot, which probably again doesn't help the team.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Like they would win all their domestic matches, but then when they play somebody outside of Iraq, they're not gonna let them win.

• 43:44Robert Evans?

  I don't think they did win. They didn't win all their domestic matches, but I do think there was a lot of, a lot of people would get, especially if you ever foul his team, you're going to get fucked up. But if they get beat, he's gonna fuck them up, his team, you know? Yeah. So Abbas Talawi, uh, the captain of the, of an opposing Iraqi team, once annoyed Uday by complaining that the referee had been ruling unfairly against his team. Quote, "The referee, it seemed to me, was, was against us. He ignored fouls by the opposition and gave a penalty against us. As captain, I protested and got a red card. That made me furious and I spat at the referee. After the game, I was told I was banned from football for a year. And to make me understand my offense better, I was sent for 33 days to

• 44:26Robert Evans?

  Uday's private prison in Al-Radwanah. There, every morning, his personal executioners beat me 50 to 70 times with an electric cable."

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Jesus.

• 44:36Robert Evans?

  Again, when it comes to like truth and stuff, these are all very consistent stories from a lot of different guys under their own names, you know? And it's all very similar kinds of torture.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  And this to me is is more believable than some of those stories about sort of specific personally, very detailed accounts of him, his own personal actions. Whereas this is delegating this violence to a state apparatus that we do know did exist. We know the prison existed.

• 45:02Robert Evans?

  We know the prisons existed and like, you know, periodically, he probably did lash out personally with violence like against that coach and just start beating people. But generally, he's he's delegating that because he's got goons. That's the benefit of being the dictator's son.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  But you could just point to a guy and say, put him in the pit.

• 45:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah. God, if I had goons, I would have fun. I would have fun with my goons. Don't, don't, don't you worry. That's where that nope, not going to make that joke. Anyway, it will not surprise you that many other players and officials claim that while Ude Hussein ran Iraqi football, it was basically a crime to beat Rashid sometimes. Sports journalist Salah Hassan explained, a red card for an Al Rashid player was forbidden. Many of their goals were scored from official from obvious offsides. Leaders of opposition teams would be suspended before facing Al Rashid. And when the team was on a winning streak, life could occasionally be good. Players who performed well were lavish with Rolex watches and supercars no normal Iraqi could ever afford.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Not worth it.

• 45:58Robert Evans?

  But not worth it. No, when top players failed, they were punished like anyone else. Ahmed Rady was one of Iraq's greatest stars of all time. He's the guy who scores their only goal in the 1986 World Cup. Here's an account he gave reporters later. Once I was unable to attend a team meeting with Ude. Ude sent a car for me in the middle of the night. I was taken somewhere outside the city, beaten and told I would no longer play football. I was punished five or six times, had my head shaved three times, was held in custody twice, including exile to a military camp where I was made to do hard labor.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  And that's their best guy.

• 46:33Robert Evans?

  That's their best guy. That's like their fucking Messi. That's the legend.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  That's crazy. Also, I'm very proud of you for knowing who Messi is. Good job.

• 46:42Robert Evans?

  Of course, I spent time in Iraq. I have to know who Messi is. A quarter of the people I met had a Messi jersey. Um, it's interesting. I came across in one of the articles I was reading about that there was this like paragraph because he's one of the things that he would do was like when he was pissed, he would have the everyone's head shaved. He would have people's like, like his players shaved.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Is that like a humiliation thing?

• 47:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of, one article felt the need to go into like, in, in Muslim culture, you know, you're not supposed to shave your head. And so this was like directly demeaning. And that's not at all what's going on. I'm sorry. You don't need to do this. Like, here, we have to explain why these, why these Muslims would be hurt by having their head shaved.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  For the Muslim mind.

• 47:23Robert Evans?

  No, it's humiliation in any culture. No, no, no. You take, here's an experiment. Get some goons, go up to any random person, restrain them violently and forcibly shave their head and see if they're traumatized.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:36Robert Evans?

  People don't like doing that. You know, it doesn't matter that they're Muslim.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  I mean, it's what they do to French collaborators, too. Like, it's culturally legible.

• 47:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it would be like if you were like, in, in French culture, being beaten while having your head shaved in the street is bad. It's like, that's bad everywhere, man.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  In the French culture, this is seen as particularly negative.

• 47:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. Nobody likes having that happen to them.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:00Robert Evans?

  And it's also this misunderstanding of Iraqi, because like, the picture it was painting is that like, as Muslims, they never shave their, and that's just not at all. Iraq, Iraq has a massive thing of like, barbers are a huge deal in Iraq. One of the coolest things, when I was in like Iraqi Kurdistan in the north during Ramadan one year, because like, it's Ramadan, shit gets started in the middle of the night, because it's too fucking hot during the day and you can't eat or drink anyway. So like, everyone becomes nocturnal for a lot of things. And like, I remember going out with a buddy, because he wanted to get a haircut. It's like fucking midnight. And the barber's like, using fire and stuff to like, cut his hair in parts. It was really cool. It was a really elaborate, really good hair. Like, and my buddy, who's an Iraqi, was like, no, Iraqis have the best barbers in the world. He was very proud about this.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Take that up on the Dominicans.

• 48:43Robert Evans?

  Seeing this in an article where they're like, here's how this strange foreign culture feels about having their head shaved. Like, that's just racism, guys.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  It's not like they're six. Like, if they were six, you would have to explain that this is particularly, uniquely bad.

• 48:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It's not. They just, nobody likes it when you forcibly shave their heads while beating them. It's generally unpleasant for people. You know who else will forcibly shave you and beat you? No.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Hopefully not the sponsors of this show.

• 49:07Robert Evans?

  I would hope not. Good God. I just, let's just go on for a second here.

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• 49:48Speaker 07

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• 50:14Speaker 05

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• 50:26Speaker 06

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• 50:33Speaker 05

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• 50:59Speaker 06

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• 51:23Speaker 07

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• 51:52Speaker 01

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• 52:35Robert Evans?

  And we're back. I've made my apologies to the sponsors. Let's talk about Uday Hussein. In 1996, Uday was the target that year of an assassination attempt on the streets of Baghdad. A team of heavily armed men's. Yeah, fucking finally. A team of heavily armed men spotted him driving his red Porsche and opened fire. He was hit and wounded eight times and barely survived. Saddam pulled out all of the stops, though, flying in a French shirt surgeon to fix his oldest boy. So you could tell Saddam didn't care about him, you know?

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, he didn't want him to die. That's beautiful. He loved his son. That's beautiful.

• 53:11Robert Evans?

  Stalin wouldn't have done that for his boy. I'll say that much.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 53:17Robert Evans?

  So Uday survives but permanently injured. He would spend the rest of his life in wheelchairs or using a cane. This contributed to Uday's further slight. Yeah, and this does not make him better or like calmer. The fact that he's now grievously injured and in pain all the time.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  He's just not having a change of heart? He's not normal now?

• 53:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the assassination attempt doesn't make him ginder.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Not a turning point.

• 53:42Robert Evans?

  This contributes to his, yeah, kind of derangement. And it also, he gets, you know, starts taking this out on his players. In 1997, Uday Hussein had been the head of Iraqi football for more than a decade, which meant he was a fairly well-known figure within FIFA, right? This is a guy who is not at all a fringe figure in that, in the world of professional football. He can't be. These are not crimes that are completely.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  FIFA's not saying like, you can't sit with us.

• 54:08Robert Evans?

  No, no, they're not. Even though he's basically like a team owner and manager rolled into one a lot of the time. So in 1997, Uday's team failed to win a qualifying match with Kazakhstan and lost their chance to attend the 1998 World Cup. Uday lost his shit and once again ordered players whipped and beaten, this time to such an extreme that he was reported repeatedly to FIFA. They carried out an investigation, but Iraq denied anything had happened. And after FIFA's experts examined 12 players, they found there was no evidence to support any of the allegations against Uday and the team management.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Famously honest, ethical FIFA, like concerned with human rights.

• 54:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  So I, yeah, absolutely. I think FIFA definitely investigated.

• 54:53Robert Evans?

  Human rights. Yeah, for sure. So earlier I told you about Sharar Al Hadithi, the famous player who was beaten on the soles of his feet, dragged across concrete and then made to jump into sewage. He was one of the players swept up in this. And he claims the team wasn't inspected by FIFA until weeks after they'd been beaten. He also claimed, per The Mirror, team captain Radhi Shanishal had been thrashed with an electric flex, but had refused to tell FIFA what happened, right? That another guy had been very recently beaten. And they saw injury, but he wouldn't say how he'd been injured. Now, it should be clear to, but that does show that the FIFA inspectors saw injuries on at least one player, according to his account, right? That is important to note. Uh, it should be clear to everyone that these athletes were loath to tell FIFA what

• 55:35Robert Evans?

  was really happening because their families were essentially hostages of the regime. That sucks, but FIFA definitely had evidence and should have known something was going on with the Iraqi team.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  And I'm not saying FIFA should have saved, like FIFA's not an international humanitarian organization. They're not gonna help them, but they should have said, "You guys can't play in FIFA games anymore. Like, you're out of FIFA."

• 55:58Robert Evans?

  I'll even go so far as to say, I'll hear a number of arguments about what they should have done, but what's undeniable is they did nothing.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:05Robert Evans?

  Right, right. And I think that's the, I'm not gonna say, I don't know what would have worked best, but they don't do fuck all, right? They just continue acting like everything is fine.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  They just say, "Oh, it looks good to me."

• 56:13Robert Evans?

  And Ude is a normal, yeah, yeah, yeah, Ude is a normal team, you know, owner or whatever.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  It's just a coincidence that every guy on the team has these weird scars on his back.

• 56:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, just a weird little goinky-dink.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  It's cultural.

• 56:24Robert Evans?

  All these stories from former players who keep escaping the country. Yeah. In 1999, after Shirar escaped Iraq, he brought claims of abuse against Iraq's team back into the mainstream. FIFA was forced to address the situation again, and per The Mirror, quote, "FIFA said last week it considered the matter still as still closed unless Shirar was prepared to talk directly to it." Well, if he wants to report directly to us again, you know, maybe we'll reopen it, but he didn't come to us, you know? There's just a bunch of articles about him saying this stuff. So because playing for Iraq in Iraq was so darn miserable, many of the best players in the country tried to get hired for teams overseas. Anyone who managed this found themselves in the unhappy position of having to convince Ude Hussein that they should be allowed to leave the country rather than stay.

• 57:07Robert Evans?

  He was often willing to agree for 60% or so of a new player's salary. That's what he would take from these guys who like went to play for European teams. Per an article in The Mirror, Janabi confirms this, "Once I collected for Ude a total sum of $350,000 from players for just six months," he says. So Ude is doing pretty good grift here, you know?

• 57:28Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, that's good money if he can get it.

• 57:31Robert Evans?

  It also, and it kind of, I wonder if, well, maybe it was part of his grift, if I just make it being a nightmare to play football in Iraq, the best players will get hired overseas and then I can take money from them. Like, I wonder how conscious a part of the grift that became for him.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  I mean, it probably wasn't intentional the first time, but once it started happening, once the first guy signed, once the first guy signed in Italy, he was like, you know what?

• 57:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  This could be lucrative.

• 57:56Robert Evans?

  You found money. Yeah. So, Uday's grifts in the latter years of Saddam's regime were legendary, as the BBC reported, quote, "Uday's criminal empire was involved in smuggling sanctioned goods such as oil and cigarettes and cocaine alongside running a fast food restaurant chain called Super Chicken and an ice cream company called The Wave. He also headed television and radio stations, was chairman of the board of seven newspapers, and was at the helm of Iraq's most successful sports club. Uday took particular pride in the fearsome image he cultivated and referred to himself as Abu Sarhan, the father of wolves." Because he's like, he's got his fedain too. He's got like his little militia at this point who wear like Darth Vader helmets, literally. They have like fake Darth Vader helmets that they wear. They never fight. They like, they get their, they, they last like three seconds

• 58:41Robert Evans?

  in combat. These guys immediately run.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  And he ran a chain of ice cream stores?

• 58:47Speaker 01

  That, that for me is the line.

• 58:49Robert Evans?

  He was a Renaissance man, you know? He runs a football team, he tortures a football team, he runs an ice cream company, he tortures ice cream, gets salesmen.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  How many locations were there of Super Chicken? And was it good?

• 59:00Robert Evans?

  I, you know, I can't, I do, I do want to eat at Uday Hussein's Super Chicken. I want to eat Uday's forbidden chicken recipe.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  I need to track down a review of Super Chicken. Because was he as good at running a chicken restaurant as he was at running a soccer team?

• 59:17Robert Evans?

  I'll guess he was as good. I'll guess he was as good, Molly. You know what?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Was he delegating? Was he really involved in the chicken?

• 59:25Robert Evans?

  From a food safety standpoint, I would hope he was delegating quite a lot. Because I don't trust him to like, be good at that. Yeah, he has, there's a lot of sewage in the Uday Hussein story, so I don't feel great about that chicken.

• 59:38Robert Evans?

  Um, Uday also extended his control in Iraqi sports to the national volleyball team, which he had imprisoned in the basement of the Olympic National Committee building where he kept his torture dungeon in what he described as a motivational exercise. I want to keep, make sure the team really knows I mean business, so I'm going to imprison them in the basement for a while.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  I mean, they would be really motivated to get out of there.

• 1:00:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I bet that would motivate your volleyball team. Maybe more volleyball teams should try this. Look, for too long, Uday Hussein's been ignored for his coaching wisdom. But maybe it's time we revisit him, you know? Maybe this is what could make your own personal Pee Wee volleyball team really, really cross the limits. Create a torture dungeon and lock them in it.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Depending on the dimensions of the pit, it could really motivate them to get better at jumping and leaping.

• 1:00:27Robert Evans?

  Sure, exactly, exactly. This could create a whole new generation of Olympic, whatever that sport is, where you jump and there's a stick, the pole ball. We can make kids better at that. You know? Maybe torture's not so bad an idea. Maybe we have, like, they just had the enhanced games, where all of the athletes were on steroids and actually they weren't particularly impressive. It kind of sucked. Yeah. What if, what about the torture games where all the teams worked the way Uday's did?

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Everybody has sepsis.

• 1:00:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Everybody has sepsis.

• 1:00:58Robert Evans?

  It's just a hospital ward. That's the whole competition.

• 1:01:03Robert Evans?

  So, Uday continued trying to impress his father, leaning towards, by this point, but kind of the later period of Saddam's regime. Saddam doesn't really want to be dictator as much as he wants to be a novelist and artist. And that's how he's really wants to spend time during kind of the latter years of his reign. Uday knew that he'd failed to earn his father's respect as a future dictator candidate, but he could still do it as a writer. And so in the last years of the regime, Uday got his PhD, publishing a 400-page thesis titled "The World After the Cold War", which was written by a guy Uday paid and printed en masse to be distributed around the country. Per the BBC, quote, "In it, Uday argues that American domination of the world stage will fade by the year 2015,

• 1:01:48Robert Evans?

  and new superpowers such as Japan, China, and the European Union will challenge the United States' moral and economic position." Couple of interesting things. 2015, not bad, honestly, on guessing the year, Uday. You could have done worse. Like, could have done worse.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Close.

• 1:02:05Robert Evans?

  But in terms of the new superpowers being Japan, China, and the European Union, I don't know, man. That might not be the specific list I'd have gone with. Like, Japan especially is kind of a weird one. No shade to Japan. I just wouldn't really call it the new superpower in the wake of the US, you know, fading. Nor the EU, really.

• 1:02:27Robert Evans?

  Again, nothing against them. That's just a weird way to, anyway, it's not quite what happened.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's not Uday's fault. It's the guy who paid.

• 1:02:35Robert Evans?

  It's the guy he pays for. I do want a copy of Uday's thesis because the cover apparently has like a picture of Saddam Hussein as Saint George slaying the dragon.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I bet we could get a copy of that.

• 1:02:44Robert Evans?

  Really suck it up to your kid, Uday. Yeah, hopefully. Somebody, somebody out there has found one. Um, yeah. So in 2003, the United States invaded Iraq in April of 2003. Yeah. I mean, initially, pretty good. The Saddam's regime did not last long, right? It was after the stuff afterwards that didn't go so well. Um, in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, like April of 2003, US Army soldiers found at the Olympic headquarters in East Baghdad, Uday's old stomping grounds, a medieval torture chamber that was linked back to Uday.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Was that the one that had the, um,

• 1:03:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's the Iron Maiden. Yeah, the Iron Maiden. Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Uh, yeah, I, it, it, it's very fun. Um, they also found, you know, his personal zoo, which had lions, cheetahs, and a bear. They found he-

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Only one bear.

• 1:03:37Robert Evans?

  Drug collections. Yeah, I think he had one bear. He had a lot of drugs. He had a lot of liquor. Uh, he was noted by the US soldiers who like found his home as having, quote, "The biggest collection of naked women I'd ever seen." He has a massive, like porn, printed out porn collection.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Okay, well, to be fair, have those guys been to Clarence Thomas's house?

• 1:03:56Robert Evans?

  No, no. Although Army Captain Ed Belanco of Montville, New Jersey said, "It looked like something out of the Playboy Mansion," which is very funny. Uh, this remote, that's from a Washington Post article by Nico Price, uh, to quote from that article, "Among the photos were those of Jenna and Barbara Bush, President Bush's 21-year-old daughters, dressed up very nice in evening clothes," Belanco said, adding that the soldiers took them to protect the president.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  You know what?

• 1:04:25Robert Evans?

  It's one of the funniest, funniest Iraq war era writing I've ever seen.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  That's actually funny.

• 1:04:29Robert Evans?

  It's so funny. And but just the, it is very America in 2003 that like these Ameri, we're gonna protect the president by getting the pictures of his daughters out of here. You know, the fact that that would wind up in a Washington Post article is extremely funny to me.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  So good.

• 1:04:44Robert Evans?

  Obviously, Uday and his brother are killed by US forces at a compound that they were inhabiting. I'm not gonna go through, like, it's not worth really going to a ton of detail about that. He's killed and obviously, his days as a soccer, as a force of power within the world of professional soccer, come to an end tragically. Not really.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Uday would have loved AI. He would, because he could have made those pictures of George Bush's daughters naked.

• 1:05:13Robert Evans?

  Yep. I gotta say, the interview with this guy Belanko.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  He would have used Grok to address them.

• 1:05:18Robert Evans?

  He would have been Grok-ing hard. He would have loved Grok. The, the interview with that, that captain Belanko about like what they found in Uday's house is endlessly entertaining. This is the captain. "There were Dom Perignon, French wines, uh, some 30 or 40 years old, a lot of very good brandy, a lot of good whiskey," Belanko said. "There were boxes of Cuban cigars that said 'Uday Saddam Hussein' on them, hundreds of them. My guys smoked them." He said there were also, this is the Washington Post, "He said there were also six bags of heroin, but he didn't know how much they held. I'm gonna guess not all that heroin made its way back to their bosses." If I know soldiers.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  You know, I just don't know how much heroin was in there.

• 1:05:55Robert Evans?

  Some of that heroin got done.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  I don't know. Not very much, actually. It was a lot of bags, but some of them were empty.

• 1:06:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, I, yeah, I'm gonna, yeah, it's one of those like, yep, they found, uh, eight bags of heroin and, uh, three bags were returned to custody at the base and an entire bag of heroin was returned to the, you know? I'm imagining there being shrinkage at several points here. Anyway, that's the Uday Hussein story. Well, that's the story. This is not his. This is not the whole Uday Hussein story. This is Uday Hussein as a soccer team owner. Yeah.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  And it looks like it looks like the Iraqi team. So they are in the World Cup again this year for their their second turn.

• 1:06:33Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  I think they got crushed earlier today.

• 1:06:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, but they made it back. That's that's what matters, right?

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  And that's the thing, getting to the World Cup at all.

• 1:06:42Robert Evans?

  Big deal.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Is a big deal, even if you get absolutely spanked by Senegal at the group stage.

• 1:06:47Robert Evans?

  And it, you know, it says a lot. I think you can obviously, Uday Hussein isn't the only setback that Iraq has in terms of its football team. There's other things that go on in that country that.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  They've had some other struggles.

• 1:06:58Robert Evans?

  They've had other struggles.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Some other struggles, non-football related struggles.

• 1:07:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Robert Evans?

  But that said, you know, it's really good. I'm really happy for the country that their team is now without Uday, made it back to the World Cup and is there again. That's great. That's that's hopeful for the future, you know? I want good things for Iraq.

• 1:07:18Robert Evans?

  How you feeling, Molly?

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  You know, that was fun. Not the torture parts, not the sewage in the in the wounds parts. That that sucked for everybody, but uh, I mean, overall, in terms of what you could have presented to me today.

• 1:07:30Robert Evans?

  One of my friends least likely to want sewage in an open wound, you know?

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'm really opposed to it. Yeah. I love a clean wound.

• 1:07:38Robert Evans?

  I can tell. We all do. That's why lightsabers are great.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  In terms of things you could have presented to me today, I'm very pleased.

• 1:07:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, good, good. Yeah, I thought I thought you'd enjoy Uday Hussein, soccer team owner.

• 1:07:50Robert Evans?

  Uh, good stuff. Anyway, Molly, your podcast, Weird Little Guys, people can and should, and also legally must listen to it. You are committing a felony if you don't. Right after this podcast, listen to Molly's, you know? You could be shot. You probably can't.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  I'll put you in the secret room I keep under my podcasting there.

• 1:08:09Robert Evans?

  You're right. Molly's got a red room for people that don't listen to her podcast. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Anyway, well, goodbye.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/AtBehindTheBastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

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