Leaders of Saddam Hussein's tribe buried the ousted dictator's elder sons, Uday and Qusay, and a grandson Saturday, their bodies wrapped in Iraqi flags in a sign the family considered them to be martyrs. Uday and Qusay – two of the most powerful and feared men in Saddam's regime, after their father – were buried in the stony soil of a family cemetery in their hometown of Tikrit, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society and the U.S. military said. Buried with them was 14-year-old Mustafa Hussein, Qusay's son, who also was believed killed in a fierce gunbattle with U.S. troops July 22 in Mosul, the northernmost Iraqi big city. A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the ceremony was quiet and uneventful. There were no outbursts of violence reported in the city. The U.S. military had feared the gathering for the burial could get out of hand, with a huge backlash against the big U.S. troop presence in and around the city. Iraqi Red Crescent Society president Jamal al-Karboli said his organization had taken the bodies of Uday and Qusay from the U.S. military in Tikrit. Al-Karboli said Saddam relatives approached the Red Crescent four days ago, asking it to act as an intermediary in recovering the bodies. The bodies of the two men had been held in refrigeration at the U.S. base at Baghdad International Airport where they were prepared for burial according to Western – not Muslim – customs.
The autopsies triggered a controversy, as Muslim tradition calls for bodies not to be embalmed or in any way retouched and for them to be buried before sundown on the day of death.
| But then, they're not in charge. |
U.S. military morticians had reconstructed the brothers' faces to look as lifelike as possible, and allowed Western journalists to videotape and photograph them, after Iraqi civilians were skeptical that Uday and Qusay were really dead. Images of the autopsied bodies were flashed across the Arab world by satellite broadcasters, dispelling doubts raised by still photographs of the brothers released shortly after their deaths in which their faces were obscured by heavy beards, blood and gashes.
| Should have left them stuffed and mounted, with their heads on plaques over the bar of the officers' club... |
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