In fact, it was a Shi'ite hit squad that had tried unsuccessfully to eliminate Uday Hussein in 1996. It was, according to a Sept. 26, 2003 report by Peter Ford in the Christian Science Monitor, a daring and unprecedented attack against a member of the ruling clan, launched by a band of Shi'ite rebels. The rebels, Ford wrote, carefully planned their attack, leaving their homes, moving into Baghdad from their southern Iraq homes, living as a kind of sleeper cell for months until the opportunity arose.
 |
| Salman Sharif |
They studied his movements, the group's leader Salman Sharif told Ford, and they learned that Uday regularly trolled the upscale Mansour district, looking for women he could bring back to his opulent lair, regardless of how they felt about the matter. It took months, Ford reported, before fate finally dropped Uday in front of their gun sights. It was just after dark in Dec. 12, 1996, and as Ford describes it, "Uday Hussein drove his golden Porsche slowly up a busy street in one of Baghdad's smartest districts...two gunmen responded to Sharif's command with a hail of bullets from their AK-47 rifles. They fired 50 rounds into Uday's car, Sharif told Ford. "We were sure we had killed him."
They hadn't. Though 17 bullets struck Uday, leaving him temporarily paralyzed, he survived.
To many, at least among those who already feared Uday Hussein, his stunning survival only served to burnish his image as an almost invincibly malevolent force.
email
print
default
increase
decrease
