Photos prove we killed sons, says US

GRAPHIC photos of the battered bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons were released by the US yesterday in a bid to convince sceptical Iraqis that the feared brothers were dead.

The headshots showed Uday and Qusay Hussein caked in blood and with badly wounded faces after they were killed by US forces in a fierce gun battle on Tuesday.

The pictures were distributed to the media in Baghdad and immediately broadcast around the globe, including in Iraq and the Middle East.

Shaven-headed Uday’s face was scarred and he appeared to have a bullet wound that had destroyed part of his nose and upper lip. Qusay was photographed on a white sheet splattered with blood. The area around his closed eyelids was severely bruised.

The brothers had grown thick beards since they were last seen in public, possibly in an attempt to disguise themselves. Two pictures of each of the corpses were released together with photographs of the men when they were alive.

The Pentagon hopes the images will quell doubts over US claims they killed the men in the six-hour gun fight in the northern town of Mosul.

“Now, more than ever, the Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and is not coming back,” US President George Bush said shortly after the pictures were released.

Fear that Saddam and his sons may return to power is believed to have stopped many Iraqis from coming forward with information about the continued resistance against US and British troops. But the decision to make the photos public posed a dilemma for the US government after it criticised broadcasters for showing footage of dead and injured American soldiers during the war.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the pictures had been released in a “dignified way” that did not denigrate the bodies.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey said the images were vital to prove the US was telling the truth.

“I think it’s necessary for the world to see and particularly for the Iraqis to see that these two are, in fact, dead, that this is not some ginned-up story from the United States.”

But doubts were quickly raised about whether the images would be enough to convince Iraqis that Saddam’s sons had been killed.

Retired US General Don Shepperd said pictures of corpses killed in battle often create more questions than answers. He told CNN: “Dead bodies don’t look like live bodies. They are torn apart with a lot of bruising and swelling. It’s not something that totally settles it.”

Jihad Ballout, an executive with the Al Jazeera network said: “The pictures don’t add anything to the case the Americans were trying to make. They muddy the waters a little bit.”

Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister who now sits on the country’s US-backed governing council, welcomed the killing of Saddam’s sons and the decision to release the photos.

“People are sceptical in Iraq and I think it is a good idea to present the evidence so that people are sure that they are dead,” he said.

Uday and Qusay’s bodies were identified from dental records and independent identifications by four former regime officials.

Injuries on one of the bodies matched those on Uday’s X-ray records, taken after an assassination attempt in the 1990s crippled him.