Exclusively available from Amazon for kindle.

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.

This book is a sequel to The Devil’s Double.
The Black Hole has been banned in Irish and American Book Shops..
The next chapter in the extraordinary and chilling life story of author Latif Yahia.

The Devil’s Double Deutsch sprachige Ausgabe.
»Fidai? Das Wort trifft mich wie ein Hammerschlag, denn ein Fidai ist mehr als nur ein Double. Ein Fidai ist alles: Doppelgänger, Kämpfer, Leibeigener. Ein Fidai muss bereit sein, für seinen Herrn zu sterben.«

THANK YOU AMERICA!

There have been a lot of people over the last twenty years of my life who have told me that I should say those words, others only hoped I would and more still believed that I never would. But here I am with them writ large as the title, you see, they are just words and it will only become clear as you read through this exactly how I mean them. Let me just say for clarification,( because I’ve had a few people recently tell me that I tar all Americans with the same brush, which I don’t) that when I say America, I do not mean every man woman and child that lives on the continent of America, I mean the Administration (and whomever happens to be the picture in front, presently it’s Obama) with special mention to it’s foreign policy. As the last troops pull out of Iraq to KUWAIT (so far away) but leave behind the biggest US Embassy in the world in Baghdad, you can’t help but see that it’s all just words. Recently when the Iraqis made comment about the 3,000 staff and 21,000 security that the American Administration were leaving in the Embassy in Baghdad they were told that if they didn’t like the US Army as security for the Embassy they (the US) could replace them with civilian staff (mercenaries). Somehow, somewhere, someone misinterpreted the whole idea of “leaving”. Leaving is everybody leaving, not 24,000 staying. But then, I have said it before, America never goes somewhere and leaves, look at Germany and Japan for instance it’s 66 years since the end of the Second world war yet they still have a presence in those countries. Sometimes I really do just sit and wonder, this isn’t news, so why do we not care? Why is it okay for America to get on it’s high horse about Human rights in other countries when compared to Europe for instance it doesn’t really have any and the great irony is that America never signs into Human rights legislation. Why have we let America become the police of the world? Historically America has never attacked a country that it knew could really fight back, Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, it’s military capabilities and population were severely weakened after 13 years of sanctions, Iraq was a soft target, but I am proud to say not as soft as the American’s first thought. So after 8 years in Iraq they are “leaving” they have “installed a democracy” that’s a misnomer in itself and after all their drum beating about Iran have left them in charge of Iraq! If you don’t believe me, just the other week when Noori al-Maliki visited the graves of US soldiers, something I might add that he has never done for the soldiers of Iraq, instead of flying straight back to Baghdad he flew to Tehran to discuss what he did in the States and get the “Okay”. So Thank You America for getting rid of Saddam Hussein and replacing him with an Iranian government, and 300 members of Parliament who all want to be Saddam and act accordingly. Thank You America for finding, training and supporting Saddam Hussein in Egypt in 1958 just so you could oust the socialist President of Iraq. Thank You America, for being in Iraq for 8 years, leaving 24,000 soldiers and staff behind at your embassy and moving next door to Kuwait. Thank You America for not rebuilding Iraq, leaving it to the new assholes in charge who haven’t built a wall, let alone an infrastructure, Iraqis are very happy that they don’t have water, electricity or proper sewerage. Thank You America, because of the invasion of iraq in 2003 there are nearly 1.5 million Iraqi deaths, Saddam didn’t manage that in 35 years. We have 5 million refugees around the world of which only a few thousand are actually in America because America only takes the Iraqis who worked for them in Iraq as refugees, Europe has taken the brunt. We have over 1 million widows and orphans, another 3 million refugees inside Iraq’s borders because of the civil war that no-one acknowledges because it would “look bad” on America. Thank You America, for bringing democracy in the shape of men who sat in the UK , US, Canada, Sweden, France, Germany, Ireland and other countries, lived on social welfare, swore allegiance to that country and upon their return to Iraq bought votes with blankets, generators and white goods. Thank You America, for finding the weapons of mass destruction that were such a threat to your homeland that you needed to travel halfway around the world to defend yourself. Thank you America for showing me the true meaning of “Human rights” when the CIA had me imprisoned and tortured for ten and a half months in Vienna because I wouldn’t co-operate. Thank you America for making sure that I have remained stateless since my flight from Iraq in 1991. Just like you promised, you’re certainly true to your word in this case. Thank You America for letting Al-Qaeda into Iraq, we never had them before. Thank You America for supporting and training Osama Bin Laden, he did a great job against those Russians in Afghanistan, it makes you wonder why he turned against you? Thank you America for making Terrorism the disease of this century, you will have plenty of “terrorists” to fight as you have created laws that make people who speak out against “America” terrorists, what happened to the “freedom of speech and Democracy” that you go around liberating other countries in the name of? Thank You America for getting the media so “on-side” that we only really see and hear what you want us to, the only Free speech is the speech you decide is Free. Thank You America for dragging the rest of the world into economic chaos, you try to arrest the 99% and leave the 1% free to do as they please that’s definitely democratic. More liberties are lost through the ballot boxes than they are by tanks! Thank You America for creating all the Dictators of the last century and today, we know you’ve been having great fun going around liberating us. Thank You America, you’ve really outdone yourself this time! A special thanks to Mr. Obama the President of America, during his speech in the White House with Noori al-Maliki who was visiting, he said the following:

I was Saddam’s Son

This is a Teaser for the forthcoming documentary I was Saddam’s Son. The documentary is set for release in 2012.

The Devil’s Double, Sold exclusively here only @ AMG

From Arcanum Media Group.

Dear customer,
We had printed a limited run of 185,150 copies of
The Devil’s Double, due to high demand for the book on pre-order it has sold out. So we are going back to press to bring you a further 50,000 copies, if you wish to secure your copy, please buy now on pre-order and your book will be delivered to you before Christmas.
We will not be supplying any other bookstore or website with this book, it is being sold exclusively here on Arcanum Media Group so if you have pre-ordered from Amazon etc please contact them for a refund.
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Find The Devil’s Double on facebook

The Devils Double Book will be re-released at the end of this month.

THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE, Book.

Dear friends, be aware that the Devils Double book will be re-released at the end of this month, please DO NOT try and buy this book through Amazon or another book site, the publisher will not be supplying any other website with the book it will be available exclusively through Arcanum Media Group. This is also where you will be able to find my other books.
Please share this link with all your friends so that they too know not to buy or pre-order the book on any other site except Arcanum Media Group as they will not receive it and may not get a refund either.
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here is the link

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4 – 7 Working days IRL/UK : 10 – 14 working days Rest of World.
 Released on 20/November/2011

• ISBN-10: 0955419131
• ISBN-13: 978-0955419133

CIA files depict Malta as Libyan terrorist hub between 1988-1991.

Lockerbie campaigners unimpressed.

Abdelbaset al Megrahi who had been found guilty of the Lockerbie bombing, with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, one of the sons of the Libyan leader, after arriving back in Tripoli. Mr al Megrahi was released from the Scottish prison on August 20, 2009.

Malta was a “primary launching point” for Libyan intelligence and terrorist teams transiting Europe, according to a recent compilation of declassified CIA cables dating between 1988 and 1991.
But campaigners for justice in the Lockerbie bombing case have slammed such claims, describing the CIA’s main informant as a “money-grubbing fantasist” who led the CIA by the nose.
The informant quoted extensively in the 255-page document (taken predominantly from declassified CIA cables released in 2008 and compiled by an international organisation) is Abdul Majid Giaka, whose testimony, as an informant, was pivotal in convicting Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing, despite the court having cast doubts on Mr Giaka’s credibility and reliability as a witness.
According to Lockerbie campaigner Robert Forrester, the recently compiled cables are so heavily redacted that any effort to corroborate the veracity of intelligence is impossible.
“Giaka was showered with US tax dollars in return for nothing of substance,” he told The Times.
Mr Forrester – who forms part of a group of Lockerbie victim family members who believe Mr al Megrahi was wrongly convicted – also criticised the CIA for showing no indication of having tried to independently corroborate any of the “so-called intelligence”.

The CIA are behind all the dictators and terrorists across the world.

“It really does look like [the CIA] swallowed it all, hook, line and sinker, until it finally dawned on them that he was worthless,” he said.
“These additional papers detailing the CIA’s relationship with Mr Giaka, add little to what is already known and to the doubts which have always hung over this case… Malta has absolutely no reason to think that these documents taint the island’s good name any more than it has been.”
However, he added that it is up to the Maltese government to take “concrete steps” to lift the cloud of Lockerbie which hangs over the island.
“The evidence is there which proves that there is no evidence to support this conviction.”
The connection with Malta and subsequently with Mr Al-Megrahi was made when police recovered from the wreckage items of baby clothing bearing the label ‘Yorkie’ made by a Maltese company. The clothing, traced to a Sliema shop, was found in the suitcase believed to have been carrying the bomb. Though the courts decided that the bomb left from Malta, another theory was that it had been placed on board a London-bound plane at Frankfurt airport before reaching the Pam Am jet that was bound for New York. Some still believe Iran, and not Libya, was behind the bombing.
Mr Giaka, the informant who is also referred to as “P/1” in the intelligence reports, was a Libyan working for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta who decided to cooperate with the CIA in 1988 because he wanted to be relocated and given money to start a new life with his Maltese wife.
In return for months of information gathering and supplying intelligence, he got the CIA to help him get mock-surgery to exempt him from military service back in Libya.
One of the intelligence reports claims that Maltese immigration and airport officials helped Libyan intelligence agents “monitor suspected Libyan oppositionists” in exchange for regular gifts. (Names are not being published for legal reasons.) They were “especially helpful” in helping officials and contacts of Libya’s External Security Organisation (ESO) travel from Malta to Libya without a trace, it was claimed.
Meanwhile, a Libyan living in Malta was used as a conduit to “Maltese Labour Union (a likely reference to the Labour Party) leaders and influential members of the Maltese Nationalist Party”.
The CIA first described Mr Giaka as “intelligent, serious and fairly well composed” as well as committed and capable of passing terrorist-type intelligence on a timely basis.
But the CIA later began to question Mr Giaka’s commitment, saying his financial situation became a major motivating factor in meeting. “[His] procrastination beyond reasonable limits is testing patience,” one report comments.
In his meetings with the CIA, Mr Giaka spoke about the visits to Malta of Mr Al Megrahi and other suspicious Libyan agents. He also speaks about orange-coloured explosives which arrived in Malta while Mr Al Megrahi was here, which were kept stored in a drawer at a Valletta apartment.
In 1991, he was described as “shattered”. He is quoted as having bluntly noted that the Maltese would do anything for money and those at the top of the current government would gladly turn him over if it meant making some cash.
Ultimately, Mr Giaka is described as “a defector from a sensitive position who has served faithfully since his walk-in in 1988” and the CIA concurred that staying in Malta would be very dangerous.
The cables also quote an anonymous Libyan businessman who says the Libyan intelligence presence in Malta would increase significantly in 1989, including personnel within both the ESO and the Libyan military intelligence service. The ESO had recruited a Maltese national employed as a vendor at Luqa airport to assist in acquiring information on persons of interest to the Libyan service, according to the cable.
“This individual prepares biographic and assessment information on personnel of interest to the ESO and forwards his reports to ESO headquarters in Tripoli via a Libyan Arab Airlines courier.”

The Devil’s Double, Amsterdam Premiere, September 5th 2011

The Dutch Premiere of The Devil’s Double, Amsterdam September 5th 2011. My special thanks to Corrino Media Group , Staccato and A-Film who organised the event, well done to all a great evening and the best premiere so far!

Vanaf 8 september in de bioscoop: The Devil’s Double (NL)! Van James Bond regisseur Lee Tamahori komt deze knallende actiefilm over de dubbelganger van de zoon van Saddam Hussein! Ook wel de Scarface van het Midden Oosten genoemd dus deze film mag je niet missen!

Mooie vrouwen in gouden bikini’s, de aanwezigheid van de internationale cast en regisseur, een stormloop op Tuschinski en meer dan genoeg BN’ertjes die deze film niet wilden missen: alle ingrediënten voor een geslaagde première waren aanwezig. Maar het meest bijzondere was toch wel dat de echte Latif Yahia acte de presence gaf met zijn familie. Inderdaad, de man die gedwongen werd de dubbelganger van Uday Hoessein te worden; een sadistische en totaal ontspoorde dictatorszoon.

Meet the real Devil’s Double: A conversation with Latif Yahia

By Jenn Schanz

Could you live with the devil for five years? How about become him?
At only 23-years-old, Iraqi military official Latif Yahia faced both dilemmas, as the psychotic eldest son of Iraq’s notorious dictator brought him to the edge of hell and back with a job offer.
Or rather, a job assignment.
To be a fiday, a double…
Adapted from Yahia’s autobiographical book, the 2011 Sundance film “The Devil’s Double” directed by Lee Tamahori and starring Dominic Cooper as both Yahia and Uday Hussein, is being called a “must-see summer movie” and the “Scarface of Arabia.”

Latif Yahia

While Yahia praised the film and Cooper’s performance, stating that “no one has played him [Uday] as well as Dominic….great performance,” it’s apparent that nothing about the film’s inspiration was glamorous.
For five years Yahia, now a Ph.D and well respected author, endured torture, forced plastic surgery, and psychological torment at the hands of a man he calls “completely erratic” – Uday Hussein.
Yahia and Hussein became classmates in their adolescence but it wasn’t until the closing of the Iran-Iraq war that Yahia was called summoned to undertake what would become the most heinous and disturbing task of his life.
Becoming Uday Saddaam Hussein.
Yahia recalls the emotional chords struck by certain scenes in Tamahori’s film: “The scene that affected me the most was the torture scene where Uday is whipping me on the bench. It reminds me of all the torture that I suffered at his hands. The scene where he tries to have me kill the father of the raped girl, not just because I refused and slit my wrists but because, although the movie doesn’t show it, Uday actually took the gun as I was bleeding and shot the man anyway, right there in his office.”
Forced to duplicate Hussein’s mannerisms, demeanor, and even dental alignment, Yahia assured me that Uday, as crazed and powerful as he was, never truly took hold of who he was.
“I never lost myself, if I had I would have given in to Uday’s lifestyle and psychotic behavior as his “friends” did,” Yahia says. “Always in the back of my head I would say “I am Latif Yahia, my father is Yahia, he raised me to be a strong and true man.”
Reflecting on the most difficult aspects of his experience as a body double, the now husband and father recalled the anguish of witnessing Uday’s treatment of women.
“Uday would find them anywhere and everywhere, if they didn’t come willingly he had them abducted. He had his pimps bring groups of girls around and he would choose, whomever was leftover the pimps could have…. I believe they should all rot in hell.”
While discussing film, which has not been shown in Iraq, Yahia also notes the sociopolitical impact “The Devil’s Double” had on the Muslim world, and why U.S. involvement in Iraq has destroyed a connection to his homeland.
“Iraq has been brought back a thousand years, thanks. The Muslim people all know what their leaders are and how they behave, in Iraq we had one Saddam and one Uday, now we have hundreds, every Ministers’ son acts in the way Uday did.”
He continues, “Anyone who says Iraq is stable is lying, delusional, corrupt and/or working for the American government. I have no feeling for a country that is run by Iranians and occupied by American forces.”
In 2003, Uday Saddam Hussien was killed along with his brother Qusay and nephew Mustapha during a U.S. Task Force 20 confrontation. Yahia was less than satisfied at hearing the news.
“I was FURIOUS! Not because he I liked him! I wanted justice! I wanted to see him in court, I wanted to stand in front of a judge and say ‘Look what this madman did to me,’ I wanted the Iraqi people to get Justice, killing him was the easy way out. No one got closure or justice that day.”
What is justice?
After reading Yahia’s book and seeing the film, I am moved by the power of individual resilience and personal character, even when the world is trying to rip it away from you. Perhaps justice is the ability to propel forward, unscathed by the evils of one’s past.
Having spent the last 15 years in Ireland, despite 105 letters to the Ministry of Justice in Ireland, Yahia still awaits to hear back from his third citizenship application. His previous two were denied.
“I will never give up my fight for free speech, freedom, and justice…I work for peace around the world, with people who believe in peace and humanity.” Yahia is now working on what he refers to as a “controversial” documentary film, and seems to be following the promise made on his personal website.
“As my dearest friends and family say ‘I don’t have a filter’ but for me it’s easy to talk about these things, I don’t have a political party to toe the line in, I’m not affiliated to anyone or anything. Therefore I can speak the truth and the only one that will pay the price will be me. If I survive the release of the documentary.”
Although Latif Yahia is still in search of a homeland, 19-years after the darkest chapter in his life, it seems that he is, in some way, at home with himself.

For more information on Dr. Latif Yahia’s story or the film “The Devil’s Double” visit www.latifyahia.com

The Devil’s Double Book.

The Devil’s Double Book.

My dear friends, I promised you a new edition of The Devil’s Double, here is the new cover of the book, it will be out before Christmas 2011, I promise and at a reasonable price, unlike the idiots on Amazon. I’m donating my royalties to the Iraqi Orphans, America does the damage and it’s up to us to try and fix the country, I urge my American friends to tell the administration to stop supporting Dictators and “liberating” us from the Dictators that they support and have installed in our countries.

Best regards to all.

Latif Yahia.

http://www.facebook.com/TheDevilsDoubleBook

 

The Id of Mesopotamia

by: Michael J. Totten

A new film captures Uday Hussein and the regime he served in all their horror.

Hollywood has finally released a feature film that takes place in Iraq but isn’t about the Iraq War. Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double tells the story of Latif Yahia, a young Iraqi officer from a privileged family who is forced to become the body double of Saddam Hussein’s psychopathic son Uday. The Iran-Iraq war is raging when the story begins, and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait takes place midway through, but these conflicts are in the background, off screen. The film, based on a book written by the real-life Latif with the help of Karl Wendl, is not about war but about the depravity of the palace.
Uday Hussein pushes drug abuse, sex, and impulsive violence to their extremes. He doesn’t just blow cocaine up his nose; he snorts it off the tip of a dagger. He likes to kill people when he gets drunk and even disembowels one of his father’s best friends at a party. We see him prowling the streets of Baghdad in his sports car and abducting young girls in school uniforms—including one still wearing braces—and taking them back to his bedroom to drug and rape them. He rapes another woman on her wedding day while she is wearing her wedding dress; a few minutes later, he is annoyed when she throws herself off a balcony. The man is pure id, scoffing at the Muslim saying “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) and insisting that God never gave him anything. “Everything I want, I just take for myself,” he says. He sure does. “You should have been killed at birth,” his furious father says, holding him down and aiming a long curved sword at his genitals. You ought to know you’ve gone off the rails when Saddam Hussein is appalled by your behavior.
Poor Latif Yahia. Not only is he forced to become Uday’s body double; he must also effectively erase his identity and become Uday. The official story is that he was killed on the front lines in the war against Iran. Even his family believes this for a while. He undergoes plastic surgery so that he’ll look even more like Uday than he already does, and he’s expected to adopt Uday’s facial expressions, mannerisms, and tones of voice. Uday even wants him to kill, and Latif gets himself into serious trouble when he refuses. Presumably the only reason that Uday doesn’t kill Latif is that Uday desperately needs him to survive. He also seems to love Latif in a twisted sort of way—at least when he’s not beating and torturing him. Latif is seriously injured in an assassination attempt when the would-be killer mistakes him for the dictator’s son. (Of course, that’s the whole point of having a double in a place like Iraq.) The real-life Latif escaped from Iraq in the 1990s and spent years in therapy to soothe the emotional trauma of witnessing so much rape, murder, torture, and mayhem at the hands of the brutal man he had no choice but to serve. To this day, he says, he can’t fall asleep until five or six in the morning.
Dominic Cooper brilliantly plays both Uday and Latif. Despite the fact that the characters look the same, I never had any doubt which character was on screen; Cooper’s subtle shifts in body language and facial expression—a wild or soft look in the eyes, for instance—made it abundantly clear which role he was playing at every moment.
I don’t want to give anything away, but I can say at least that the film eventually departs from what took place in the real world to tack on an entirely fictional (though emotionally satisfying) ending. The writers presumably thought the departure made for a better story. Despite the modification, the film is well worth seeing for its vivid, accurate depiction of the viciousness of Uday Hussein and of the filthy regime he was born into.
The Devil’s Double is also blessedly free of even the tiniest anti-American jab, something that can be said of few feature films Hollywood has produced that take place in Iraq. (The only others worth watching are Three Kings and The Hurt Locker.) It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the film was made to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the American-led coalition. Latif doesn’t seem to be a fan of the war himself, for one thing. And though Uday Hussein did meet his end at the hands of American soldiers in Mosul in 2003, The Devil’s Double isn’t about the United States, even peripherally. Latif’s book was written before the invasion, and hardly anyone knew it existed until after the overthrow of Saddam’s regime. So few copies of the first edition were published that if you want to buy one from Amazon, you’ll have to pay $1,000, as of this writing. The most expensive copy costs over $100,000.
A story about Iraq written by an Iraqi is refreshing. Events in that country are far too often analyzed as though the United States were always at their center. Even during the darkest days of the insurgency, between 2004 and 2006, far more Iraqis were injured and killed by other Iraqis than by American forces. And many more Iraqis were killed and traumatized during the period in which The Devil’s Double takes place than after the American-led invasion.
If you’re inclined to view this film as a justification for the war in 2003, you’ll have a case. At least the invasion prevented Uday from ruling the country even more viciously than his father did. But the genre that the movie truly belongs to is Totalitarian Studies. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, which it did in the case of Saddam Hussein, what happens when a boy is raised with absolute power before he has a chance to mature? The Devil’s Double answers that question with the force of a punch to the stomach.
Michael J. Totten is a contributing editor of City Journal and author of The Road to Fatima Gate and In the Wake of the Surge. Visit his blog at www.michaeltotten.com.