FROM BUZZLE.COM



Torture of Iraq's Athletes

By Guardian Newspapers, 2/1/2003

Saddam Hussein presumably has other things on his mind this weekend, but George W Bush is not the only person on his case. Officials from the International Olympic Committee may soon be in Baghdad to have a word with the Iraqi dictator's eldest son, Uday, about allegations that Iraqi athletes have been tortured and imprisoned on his orders.

The IOC ethics commission have received a report detailing the systematic punishment of athletes, sometimes in the opulent headquarters of the Iraq National Olympic Committee, an organisation Uday has overseen since 1984. The building contains a dark secret, like Room 101 out of George Orwell's 1984 , where your worst nightmares come true. It is a prison on the first floor where as many as 50 sportsmen and women may have been murdered and many hundreds tortured, beaten and left to rot.

Indict, a London-based human rights group who receive funds from the United States State Department and who are led by the Welsh MP Ann Clwyd, filed a complaint with the IOC ethics commission in December asking that Iraq be suspended from the Olympics. The group's complaint included an affidavit and photographs alleging torture of a former table tennis player on the national team.

Uday allegedly tortures athletes when they fail to perform up to expectations. He has beaten them with iron bars. Caned the soles of their feet. If Uday stops by a player's jail cell, he might urinate on his bowed, shaven head to further humiliate him.

Among those who have spoken out are former volleyball player Issam Thamer al-Diwan, who claims he was shackled and contorted in painful positions by Uday after losing a big match; footballer Sharar Haydar, who says he was imprisoned and tortured after he announced his retirement from the international team; and Raed Ahmed, a weightlifter who carried Iraq's flag at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, who alleges he was tortured.
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One of the main fears of the Iraqi athletes is that any IOC investigation might be conducted as badly as the one carried out by Fifa in 1997 after allegations that three players were tortured and imprisoned following Iraq's 4-1 defeat by Japan in an Asian Cup match. When the team returned, the goalkeeper Hashim Hassan, defender Abdul Jaber and striker Qahtan Chither were named as the main culprits for the loss.

They were whipped for three days by Uday's bodyguards. On another occasion players were forced to kick a concrete football after failing to reach the 1994 World Cup finals.