Iraq Bans Hussein Son's Paper (Uday Hussein's Babel silenced for one month)

Newsday ^ | 11-21-2002 | By Mohamad Bazzi

[weegee]

Cairo - Perhaps it was the report picked up from Western media claiming that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had reached a secret deal with Libya to provide sanctuary for his family and inner circle in exchange for several billion dollars.

Or maybe it was the repeated criticism of fellow Arab leaders, whom Hussein has been trying to win over in his effort to head off a U.S. attack.

Whatever the reason, the Iraqi government was not saying yesterday why it had banned a newspaper owned by Hussein's eldest son, Uday, from publishing for a month. The tabloid, Babel, is widely considered Iraq's most influential newspaper because it carries items from Western news agencies that are often critical of the Iraqi regime. These items are published in a section labeled "If foreign news agencies are to be believed," but they are still the only bits of critical news that most Iraqis can find in an otherwise tightly controlled press.

[weegee]

Article excerpted because of prohibition on full citation of Newsday articles.

This article had more details than some of the other newsbriefs I saw on this story.

[Chad Fairbanks]

Well, good... that guy tends to babylon and on and on anyway...

[ConservativeMan55]

Thanks for posting this. I was looking for more articles on Uday.
I hear he is one wild and crazy guy!!

[Diogenesis]

Uday Hussein was shot and severely wounded on orders of his father Saddam because he has no testicular fortitude.
He survived and is still alive (for now).

[ApesForEvolution]

"Some Iraqi journalists speculated that Uday's newspaper was suspended for defying an Information Ministry order issued earlier this year not to publish news that could offend Arab leaders or governments.

In its Saturday editions, Babel published a story headlined, "Jordan's Tyrant Wreaked Havoc," about a crackdown by the Jordanian army on Islamic militants in the southern town of Maan. The paper also ran a story on political restrictions in Egypt titled, " Mubarak and His Clique."

The world will rue the day it coddled the snake known as islam...

[weegee]

His daddy Saddam has at least 4 look alikes in circulation.

Did pappa spring for some decoys for Uday?

[undergroundwarrior]

Just heard on Fox that Yahoo suspended Uday's email account. Yahoo says it cooperates with the government.

[EggsAckley]

I agree on the look-alikes. The above photo doesn't look much like the one posted a few days ago.