Kamel Hana Gegeo

Who was Kamel Hana Gegeo?

Kamel Hana Gegeo was a personal bodyguard of Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, and served as his valet and food taster.

Gegeo, an Iraqi Christian of Assyrian ethnicity, is said to have introduced Saddam to his second wife, Samira Shahbandar, and arranged trysts between them. Saddam's son Uday took this as an insult to his mother, Saddam's first wife. In early 1988, Uday almost killed Kamel for "the sake of his mother's honour". Uday spared him in that encounter. However, "on October 18 1988 at a party thrown in honor of Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Uday bludgeoned Gegeo with a club in front of guests, and by some accounts, finally stabbed him to death with an electric carving knife."

Uday's murder of Gegeo diminished his standing in his father's court: Saddam exiled him to Switzerland immediately following the killing. The incident also exacerbated Uday's international reputation for brutality. Mubarak later called him a "psychopath".

He was portrayed by Akbar Kurtha in the BBC's series House of Saddam and Mem Ferda in The Devil's Double.