THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE: is the first of 3 autobiographical books chronicling Latif Yahia’s incredible life story. It vividly describes how Latif was forced to become Uday Hussein’s ‘fidai’ (body double) and gives a unique insight into the extreme extravagance and cruelty of the Saddam regime. Latif survived assassination attempts and witnessed Uday’s psychotic temper, rapes, orgy parties, torture atrocities, and sadistic murders. The book has recently been made into a highly acclaimed movie.
THE BLACK HOLE: gives a fascinating account of what happened to Latif in Europe after he escaped from Iraq. How he was treated by western governments and the CIA. How Uday sought revenge on Latif and vice-versa. How he was offered a British passport by Saudis to murder a dissident and how they beheaded Latif’s Saudi princess lover. How Latif made and lost a fortune. How he strived in vain for a peaceful life and survived 4 more assassination attempts.
Forty Shades of Conspiracy: brings Latif’s story right up to date by detailing his time in Ireland. His run-ins with drug-dealers, Corrupt Irish Garda officers and Irish politicians who continually denied him Irish citizenship. His despair as a beggar on the streets and the happiness he found after he met the love of his life. His reaction to Uday and Saddam’s deaths and his opinion on the current political situation in Iraq all makes fascinating reading.
Book Description: In 1987, Latif Yahia was taken to Saddam's headquarters to meet Uday, Saddam's eldest son, and told that a great honour had been bestowed upon him: that because of the great likeness between them, he had been chosen to be Uday's double. For many Iraqis it would have been the highlight of their lives, but for Latif, a peace-loving man who did not agree with Saddam's brutal regime, it was not. He refused. Following a week of torture, and realising he would be killed if he continued to refuse, Latif was forced to accept the role. After a gruesome training programme during which he was made to watch over thirty films of torture, hours of tapes of Uday, and undertake a final remodelling of his appearance, Latif was deemed ready. But it was only after the final test, a meeting with Saddam himself, that Latif made his first public appearance. And so began his life as Uday's double - a life on the perimeter of the inner circle of Saddam's eldest son, a witness to the horror of his insane life of debauchery, excess and brutality, and an experience for which he almost paid with his life on more than one occasion.
From The Publisher: Latif Yahia has never attained citizenship from another country, still stateless since his flight from Iraq in 1992, he attributes this to the fact that he refused to work with intelligence services against his country. There should be a distinction made between Saddam and Iraq, being against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 did not mean that he was for Saddam, he opposed the war because he knew what it would do to the Iraqi people and the country as a whole and also who would be appoionted Iraq’s new leaders and what they too were capable of. At the beginning of the invasion, Latif Yahia warned the American led forces that ‘they may remove one Saddam but they would create one hundred and they may remove one Uday but make one hundred more’. This has been proved by recent events in Iraq, After his flight from Iraq Latif Yahia was considered by Saddam and the regime to be a Traitor, now within the new government he is considered to be a collaborator. A no win situation.
You may or may not be aware that Mr. Yahia is donating his royalties from all sales of the book, to the Iraqi children Orphaned by the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent war.