| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| Uday tortured Olympic athletes |
| 2003-03-08 |
| As the longtime deputy chairman of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee, Aseel Tabra was known by former athletes as the trusted lieutenant to whom Uday Hussein turned to carry out many of his orders, even when those directives involved the imprisonment and torture of athletes and coaches. To Uday, apparently, loyalty only counts for so much. Tabra, whom the International Olympic Committee will likely want to speak to in its ethics probe, has been sent recently to one of Iraq's toughest prisons, according to the Iraq Press, a publication run by exiles from the Middle East nation and funded by the U.S. government. Uday, president of the Olympic committee since 1984 and the eldest son of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, placed Tabra and several other senior aides in the notorious al-Radwaniya detention center on the outskirts of Baghdad following "revelations of large-scale embezzlement and fraud" in the Olympic committee, the Iraq Press reported. Apparently Uday didn't get his cut? Good way to get to sleep with the fishes The IOC Executive Board, headed by president Jacques Rogge, endorsed Feb. 21 a formal investigation of the Iraqi Olympic committee, which former athletes and associates say is a front for Uday's wide-ranging criminal business operation. Another task for international inspectors... right now might not be a good time "Let (Tabra) go to hell," said Issam Thamer al-Diwan, a former national team volleyball player and coach who alleges he was twice tortured on orders of Uday. "Sooner or later, Tabra would have been killed anyway by the Iraqi people. He is Uday's protector." Kharma - what comes around, goes around The exact reasons for Tabra's apparent punishment remain unclear, although former national team athletes familiar with the Iraqi Olympic committee suspect Tabra in some in way angered Uday, who is an a nut, and capable of snapping over anything whose mood swings and reputation for violence are legendary. They doubt Uday had blamed Tabra for the charges of torture that the IOC Ethics Commission is now starting to look into, as Tabra only acts on behalf of Uday, they say. Maybe Tabra didn't torture hard enough? "As a person, he was a nice guy to me," said Sharar Haydar, a former national team soccer player. "But if you work with Uday, you have to be evil." and not almost-evil, you have to be really evil The former players say Tabra is from a wealthy family in Iraq and was recruited by Uday to the Olympic committee for his polished manner. As a top Olympic official, he has often been used to greet and meet foreign delegations interested in lifting the United Nations embargo that has been in place since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In May 1998, the Hussein family sent Tabra to the United Arab Emirates "for discussions on bilateral relations, issues of mutual concern and conditions of the Iraqi handicapped and ways of helping them," according to a press release by the UAE Ministry of Information and Culture. In October 2000, Tabra was the Iraqi official selected to welcome a plane from Tunisia carrying doctors, soccer players and humanitarian aid to Baghdad, The Associated Press reported. The next month, Tabra, again ostensibly in his role with the Olympic committee, greeted a plane from Syria that arrived at Saddam International Airport. Indict, a human rights group, submitted this photo of Karzan Muhammed Latif, a Iraqi table tennis player who claims he was tortured under orders of Uday Hussein, in its report to the International Olympic Committee. Former athletes and associates of Uday told ESPN.com in a December report that the real purpose of the Iraqi Olympic committee is not to serve athletes, but to steer black-market business to Uday, who allegedly has made money off cigarettes, oil, stolen cars and other goods, some of which have been stored at the Olympic headquarters in Baghdad. "Tabra is very important," Thamer said. "He's one of the criminals." Amid concerns about the logistics of investigating allegations of torture at a time when the U.S. is preparing for a war with Iraq, the IOC last month began seeking the contact numbers and addresses of former Iraqi athletes and associates of Uday. Some of them filed affadavits with Indict, a London-based human rights group funded by the U.S. government, while others had shared their stories with ESPN.com in its report. The ethics commission appears to be moving cautiously with its probe, to the disappointment of former athletes who have offered their testimony. "I haven't received a letter or a call," Haydar said. "They must not be serious people." Meanwhile, other former Iraqi athletes are coming forward for the first time to share their accounts. Najem Alekabi, a former heavyweight wrestler, said he was shot in the torso in 1988, a year after winning the national championship. A Shiite Muslim, he said he was attacked by one of Saddam's commando units for praying too often (the Hussein family is Sunni Muslim, a rival sect in Iraq considered more moderate in its religious beliefs). Alekabi, who now lives in the San Diego area, said he was not tortured as an athlete but knows of others who were. One fellow wrestler on his club team was executed, he said. He also claims Uday abused sports facilities such as the lone Olympic swimming pool in the nation, where he filled the water with emptied liquor bottles from personal parties. "Where was the IOC on that?" he said. On the Iraq Press Web site, Saad Qeis, a top Iraqi soccer player in the 1990s, wrote an extended first-person account of his experience of being tortured in 1997 after a 4-0 defeat against Turkmenistan. Uday was "furious" with him for getting ejected from the game, he wrote. "Upon arrival in Iraq, I was immediately driven to the headquarters of the Olympic commission and after warnings, threats and censure I was sent to Radwaniya," he wrote, of the same prison Tabra allegedly was placed in. "There they put me in a room with an array of canes mounted on the shelves on the wall. They ordered me to strip to the waist and lie on the ground. They flogged me. I bled profusely and fainted." Confirming what Haydar told ESPN.com in December, Qeis said a two-day probe into the rumors of torture by the world governing body for soccer was flawed by the players' inability to speak honestly with investigators. FIFA, the governing body, later announced it had found no evidence of torture. "I was there when the FIFA investigators came to Baghdad," Qeis wrote. "They asked athletes questions about whether they were tortured or not. No one (sic) of us could have admitted to torture and stayed alive. Nobody dares to tell the truth of what happens while he is in Iraq." Deja Vu all over again That veil of silence has slowly been lifting in recent years, and particularly in the past three months. Among the personal accounts Indict says it has shared with the IOC is an affidavit signed Sept. 2 of last year by Karzan Muhammed Latif, a national team table tennis player whose identity Indict had not disclosed originally to the media. In his affidavit, acquired by ESPN.com, Latif alleges he was struck with a cable and made to crawl on hot asphalt after being accused — falsely he says — of insulting Uday Hussein. Indict also submitted photos showing scars on the athlete's back and arms, which allegedly are the result of being tortured. The IOC ethics commission has said Uday will be given an opportunity to respond to the charges. Haydar doubts his former Olympic chief is taking the IOC probe seriously — and not just because the U.S. is gearing up for war against the Hussein regime. "Uday laughs at the IOC because he knows they can't do anything to him," he said. Nice photo on the link showing the table-tennis player's torture scars |
| Posted by:Frank G |
| #1 Ever since seeing Forest Gupp I've been in favor of torturing table tennis player. Lets face it they can't be trusted. |
| Posted by: Darkmark 2003-03-08 16:15:26 |