| There are many versions and gossip surrounding the fate of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. These days, another one has appeared, and Iranian intelligence services may be behind it. In any case, it is spread by Iraqi Shiites who returned from long-term emigration to Iran. Columnist for the Vremya Novostei newspaper Elena SUPONINA spoke in Baghdad with an activist of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, doctor Muslim ASADI. He specializes in studying the biography and photographs of the Iraqi leader and his doubles.
- We studied the latest photographs of Saddam, comparing them with the previous ones. We found at least five differences between the real Saddam and each of his doubles. We had specialists doing this, physiognomists in particular. So, one of Saddam's doubles is five centimeters taller than him. Saddam himself is 185 centimeters tall. Another forehead shape. Ears, auricles. Their curves are as individual as fingerprints. There are also differences in the shape of the shoulders. And, of course, the hands: hands and lines on the palms. In one of the shoots, a man who looked like Saddam held his palm in front of the camera in a greeting for several seconds. The lines on the palm did not match those that the real Saddam used to have.
- And how many doubles does Saddam have?
—During the days of the war, three people who looked like Saddam appeared before the public. That man in heavy horn-rimmed glasses who, on behalf of Saddam, read his speech to the camera on the first day of the war, of course, is not the Iraqi leader, even amateurs understood this. Saddam himself did not like to appear in public wearing glasses; in general, he was a bit of a dandy. However, there are doppelgängers who are more similar to him. They have been playing his role lately. Because Saddam himself disappeared from Iraqi television in 1999. The one who appeared since then was his double. One was so similar that even Saddam’s children could not always distinguish him from their father when he was still alive, although they knew about the substitution. We received this information from sources in Hussein’s family and from one of his doubles who fled abroad. He now lives in Washington.
- Do you know his name?
- This is Mikail Ramadan, originally from Karbala, south of Baghdad, born in 1944. In his memoirs, he recalls that Saddam was extremely struck by Mikail’s natural resemblance to himself. He even joked unkindly, saying, maybe the parents got something wrong there? And people from the city of Tikrit, from the same tribe as Saddam, are generally very similar; outsiders often confused some of Saddam’s relatives with him. And even more so if you undergo plastic surgery. Although some copies of Saddam were not from Tikrit. Another one we know of was formerly called Jasim Muhammad Ali. The third is Fauzi Umari. Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusei, also had doubles. One of Uday’s doubles is called Latyf, he fled to London, where he lives now.
—And where did the real Saddam go after 1999?
-- Died. In that very year 1999. He was buried secretly in Tikrit, in his father's grave. The inscription only says that Saddam's father, who died 66 years ago, in 1937, on the eve of the birth of his son, is buried there. But there is evidence that Hussein Jr. was also placed in the same grave in strict secrecy. Saddam had cancer of the lymph glands and was treated unsuccessfully by French doctors. After his death, Iraq was ruled by his sons and people from his inner circle. Interviewed by Elena SUPONINA
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