ONE look at Latif Yahia and the physical scars are easy to see. Now his story has been turned into a film, The Devil's Double.
It is a vicious, unrelenting look at the cruel world of Uday Hussein, a man considered even more sadistic than his mass-murdering father, with Captain America and Mamma Mia! star Dominic Cooper putting in a remarkable performance as both Latif and Uday.
Latif, 47, now a writer and human rights lawyer, says: "I'd been shot because they thought I was Uday. A lot of people in Iraq hated him. The army tried to assassinate him. Anyone whose wife or sister had been raped by Uday would want revenge."
Uday kept Latif so close that he was regularly exposed to his criminal acts.
He says: "What is in the movie is only 20 per cent of the reality. It is a scary movie but there was worse.
"He would take a drill and drill into the head. He would take out the eyes with a spoon. The rape was very bad for me to see, especially if the woman was pregnant."
Being so close to the tyrant, Latif himself could have turned assassin.He says: "I was carrying a gun and he was just a metre away and I could shoot him in the head.
"But what was coming into my head was my father and my family. If I killed him they would kill my father and my sisters."I know what would have happened to them because I was in the middle of torture and rape.
"When I saw these things I was seeing the picture of my family and this is why I didn't do it." The Iraqi has survived a dozen assassination attempts and his body has the marks left by 26 bullet wounds.Latif first met Uday at the privileged Baghdad College For Boys when they were in the same class.
He took an immediate dislike to the dictator's son and later even switched his university course from engineering to law to avoid him.
But during his compulsory service in the Iraqi army, Latif was called to the Palace. He recalls: "When he first asked me to be his double it was like somebody had hit me with a hammer.
"He told me it was my choice and it was a free country. I soon learned it wasn't like that. When I said no I ended up in a cell painted red. After a week of that he threatened to rape my sisters if I didn't do it."
So Latif agreed to Uday's demands - but soon reached desperation point.
He says: "OK, I lived in the palaces, I had the best clothes, the best of everything, but I couldn't get out and couldn't have a life.
"I tried to slit my wrists after Uday asked me to shoot somebody - the father of a schoolgirl he had raped. I wouldn't do it."
Talking to Latif, it becomes clear how twisted Iraq was under the control of the Hussein family.
He was not shot because of who he was but because the people of his homeland believed he was Saddam Hussein's son Uday. Latif had the misfortune to look like the psychotic son of the brutal dictator and so he was forced to be his body double, acting as a distraction from the would-be assassins' real target.
Once, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Latif was sent to the front line to give a speech so the Iraqis would think it was Uday being brave. But on the way, the car was ambushed and Latif was shot.
Today an occasional flicker of fear in his eyes reveals the deeper mental scars that still give him nightmares 20 years after he escaped from Iraq.
For those eyes have witnessed horrors that no human being should see.
Working as Uday's doppelganger between 1988 and late 1991, Latif saw rape, torture and murder on an unimaginable scale.
Uday created his own inner circle of trusted bodyguards and killers, separate from his father's intelligence service. Latif says: "He had his own country inside the country. He built his own empire."
In November 1991 Latif's life finally changed - drastically and for ever. He recalls: "I was selling one of my cars and I wouldn't sell it to one of Uday's pimps who wanted it. So Uday shot me in the shoulder."
Bleeding, he managed to escape to the Iraqi city of Mosul where his family smuggled him north to the border with Turkey. From there the CIA got him a UN passport and safe haven in Austria.
But it was not the end of Latif's troubles. He says: "I went through five years of counselling. But even last night I still had nightmares. The Valium doesn't work any more.
"I believe when I was in Austria I still had some of Uday's characteristics, but to a lesser extent. Anybody could make me angry and I'd snap. But after 11 years I calmed down, when I met my wife, Karen.
"She calmed me down, when I had children." Latif is now dad to Charlie, Saif, Chimen, Latif and Dina.
But despite making a new life in the West, Latif claims there have been four attempts to kill him, including one in London. He lived in Ireland for 15 years but now moves around Europe. Watching Dominic Cooper playing himself and Uday on the film set in Malta brought back the horrors of his past.
Latif says: "He scared me when I saw him playing me talking like Uday. It brought bad memories back for me. I never took Valium like I took it in Malta."
The screenwriter and director of The Devil's Double have radically changed Latif's life story, particularly at the end. But he says it is still 60 to 70 per cent accurate and he is happy with the result.
However there have been questions raised by some Iraqi exiles over how much of the film is pure fiction, with some claiming that Latif was not even Uday's double. It is something he hotly disputes. He says: "Those people sitting in judgment on me are pimps.
"Sure, they talk bad about me. They are worried because I am a witness to what happened.
"You ask my wife. She will tell you about my scars. I have 26 on the whole of my body, from bullets and a hand grenade. I have 16 stitches in my stomach."
Latif certainly seems to be a genuine man and has a deep knowledge of the inner workings of the regime.
Surprisingly, he did not celebrate when Uday was gunned down by Allied forces in 2003 following the second Gulf War.
Latif says: "I was very angry when I heard he was killed. I wanted to see him in court. I wanted to see him punished.
"In the eyes of a lot of Iraqis and Arabs he is a martyr. Even some opposition say it to me. But this guy is not a martyr.
"One of the soldiers who was there when he was killed sent me a photo of him dead.
"He said that Uday was hiding in the toilet when he was killed. You can see how much he was a coward.
"The wall fell on him. This monster was always a dictator like that. When you catch him he is a mouse."
Source: thesun.co.uk
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