Historical story

Daddy won't help you anymore. The most brutal deaths of dictatorial children [18+]

In their youth they lived like kings. They had fleets of luxury cars and their biggest stars performed at their private concerts. But the happy childhood of the sons and daughters of the dictators lasted only as long as the power of their fathers. And it ended just as tragically.

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, had no luck with fertile spouses for a long time. The first wife, an Egyptian princess, only gave him a daughter. The second one could not have children at all. Only the third, Farah Diba, gave him four offspring, including two sons of his dreams.

Surrounded by love and pampered, the Shah's children grew up in a fairy-tale setting. They attended a microscopic school established especially for them in the palace. They spent their winters in a charming resort by the Caspian Sea or skiing in St. Moritz, and their holidays on the paradise island of Kish in the Persian Gulf. Both sons, Cyrus Reza and Ali Reza, were interested in aviation, so they got the opportunity to obtain a pilot's license. Daughters - Farahnaz and Leila - preferred wild animals. The Shah brought them to the palace garden especially for them.

You won't be safe anywhere!

The happy childhood of the young Pahlavi ended in 1979 when the revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini broke out in Tehran. The Shah, with his wife and children, left Iran, never to return. Many years of wandering around the world began. The new Islamic authorities tried to extradite the Shah. Wherever the Pahlawi family went, they were accompanied by angry Muslim demonstrations and threats . Mentally exhausted and struggling with blood cancer, the former ruler died soon.

Happy family picture? By the time. Ali Reza (first on the right) took his own life. His younger sister (she was still an infant when the photo was taken) also died tragically. Shah with children in the early 1970s (photo:Royal court of Iran, license CC BY 2.5).

The feeling of constant danger had a devastating effect on the psyche of Reza Pahlavi's children, especially the two youngest - Ali Reza and Leila. Seemingly they were doing well. They had professional successes:Ali Reza even defended his PhD at Harvard! In fact, however, they were unable to find any meaning and joy in life.

Suffering from anorexia and depression, Leila was found dead in a hotel room in London. She overdosed on barbiturants (or more precisely, Seconal). She took 40 doses of the drug instead of the prescribed two. She stole the drug from her doctor's desk - that was her desperation.

Ali Reza shot himself in the head in his Boston home, unaware that his partner was pregnant. His depression had been building up since he left Iran - his life in exile, the death of his beloved father and sister led to another tragedy Ali's friend testified. The Shah's wife, Farah, sadly wrote in her diary that the cause of their deaths were childhood experiences, the burden of which they could not shake off. However, she did not rule out the… curse by the Islamists.

20 wives, 56 children!

Establishing the true number of descendants of the grotesque, self-proclaimed emperor of the Central African Republic, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, will probably never be possible. Gifted with an impressive drive, the ruler brought more wives from practically every foreign trip. In his harem there were a Vietnamese, Romanian, Belgian, Tunisian, English ... and of course a number of representatives of the local tribes.

Bokassa passionately confused the names of his wives. He did not even try to remember the names of the children . He himself admitted that "they are a little scattered everywhere." On the plus side, it can be counted that he admitted to paternity, even when he was dubious, very willingly. I am not hiding anything, why should I? He would say, considering the numerous offspring to be proud of the man and the emperor.

Son of the Emperor, a Parisian tramp

Nothing can be said for sure about the life and death of many of Bokassa's children, but even those sons most appreciated by the emperor should not be envied by their fate. The beloved son of the emperor was Saint-Cyr. He had an appetite for women as great as his father. Father even suspected him of sleeping with his own mother - Empress Catherine ! However, this did not undermine his limitless confidence:he made Saint-Cyra the commander of the palace guard.

Foreign expeditions were an opportunity for Bokassa to find new wives. His son Saint-Cyr inherited from his father an unbridled appetite for women. Pictured here is the Central African dictator with his Romanian counterpart Nicolae Ceausescu (source:Institutul de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului în România).

However, his beloved son did not show off as a zealous defender of Emperor Bokassa. When the French finally decided in 1979 to put an end to his father's beastly perverse dictatorship, Saint-Cyra's guards allowed themselves to be disarmed without firing a shot. He himself, the most important and faithful of the emperor's sons, ended his life under mysterious circumstances. He died from poisoning with five times the dose of chlorokine.

Even worse was the son of the Emperor's wife from Gabon, Charlemagne. With the lack of care and financial support from his father, young Bokassa quickly fell to the level of a Parisian tramp. And no one would have heard of him again if he had not been accidentally recognized by a photographer from the French Press Agency going to work.

However, the momentary media attention did little to help the son of the late dictator. He was soon found dead in one of the subway stations, where he was sheltering from the cold. He died of a drug overdose. His death resulted in another tragedy. Upon the news of the unfortunate end of his beloved, his mother also committed suicide in Africa - one of the twenty empresses.

Parisian homeless people wandering under the Morland Bridge. Among them there would probably be one who still remembers the son of the self-proclaimed Central African emperor (photo:Dominique Antony, license CC BY-SA 1.0).

Serie A player and Beyoncé for the chop

However, no one could compare with the children of Libya's dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, with the breadth and fancy of whims. There were eight of them. The son of Muhammad was the fruit of his first failed relationship with Fatiha al-Nuri. The second wife, Safia Farkash, bore the Libyan leader six sons and a daughter.

The third oldest son, Saadi, was a soccer fanatic. So Gaddafi made him… the vice-president of the local football association and the owner of a leading Libyan club. He also organized his descendant's career in Italy. Saadi became a player for Perugia, Udinese and Sampdoria. He even made a few Serie A appearances.

Slightly younger than Saadi al-Mutasim, he preferred champagne fun to good music. Live best - for private appearances of stars such as Beyoncé or Usher, they charged 700,000 euros at a time ! The American R&B singer was, moreover, the favorite artist of Gaddafi's children. When another son of the dictator, Hanibal, massacred the face of his wife, Lebanese model Alina Skaf, as an apology, he took her to a dinner in New York with a Beyoncé performance just for the two of them. The apology was accepted.

The article was inspired by the book by Rosemary Sullivan, titled “Stalin's Daughter. The unusual and turbulent life of Svetlana Alliluyeva "(Znak Horyzont 2017).

The slaughter of the crime family

Gaddafi was removed from power in 2011. The crowd, freshly remembered for years of brutal rule, had no mercy for the dictator. The captured, wounded ruler of Libya was raped with a metal rod before his death.

His children were not much better fate. Al-Mutasim was also brutally tortured. His body was later exposed to a public laughing stock with his father. The younger Saif al-Arab, who died during the NATO bombing, had more "luck". In turn, the eldest of Safia's sons, Saif al-Islam, was sentenced to death by a Libyan court.

The most amazing rumors concern the death of the youngest of Gaddafi's sons, Chamis. He was the patron of the dreaded 32nd People's Army Brigade. One popular version says that he died in a suicide attack by a fighter on his own General Staff, on the eastern front of Tripoli, during clashes with rebels. According to other accounts, Khamis died in the estates of the Warfall tribe, the last loyal stronghold of Gaddafi. There are also those who saw him sneaking out of the siege aboard the Boening 747, belonging to the Sultan of Oman ... What was it really like? We'll probably never know.

Libyan National Security Adviser Al-Mutasim Al-Gaddafi with the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He died just two years later (photo:U.S. Department of State, public domain).

Sons - wild animals

Gaddafi's sons indulged in bestialities, but the primacy of inherited cruelty from a parent must be undisputedly accorded to the sons of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi dictator himself raised his two sons, Udajj and Kusajj, to be true "wild animals" from the very beginning. The boys were involved in the torture of prisoners from an early age.

We didn't have to wait long for the effects of this upbringing. When one of Hussein's favorite bodyguards threw a loud party, Udajj, upset by the noise, tore his throat with a rose knife. The saddened ruler of Iraq "as a punishment" sent his son to Switzerland ... for 40 days.

Udajj liked to surround himself with wealth. Amassed a fleet of 5,000 luxury and sports cars. He also had a small private zoo with predators. And in his bedside table by his bed was a black notebook with addresses and telephone numbers of several hundred women - in case he did not want to rape a random woman kidnapped from the street.

Happy family of Saddam Hussein? Probably only in the photo. Because in the middle is Udajj, and the first from the right - Kusajj (photo:Iraqi State Television, public domain).

With his psychopathic older brother, Kusajj, who was two years his junior, could have passed for a quiet man. He also quickly began to be considered the natural heir to the throne. In Baghdad, however, he was called "the snake." He loved blood and torture as much as his brother. Only that he committed his crimes discreetly and with cold calculation.

Last Aces in a deck

After conquering Baghdad in 2003, the Americans began a true hunt for Hussein and his sons. The soldiers received decks of cards with images of the pursued criminals. This made it easier for them to recognize and capture or eliminate Udajja - the ace of hearts and Kusajja - the ace of spades.

The brothers tried unsuccessfully to hide in Mosul. They stayed with one of Saddam Hussein's friends, who totally believed in the power of the family and in debt of gratitude. And they were not going to give up easily. Once located, they greeted the enemies with a barrage of Kalashnikov bullets.

Saddam Hussein shortly after his capture by American soldiers in December 2003. His sons would not allow him to be taken alive (photo:U.S. Navy, public domain).

Admittedly, Udajj and Kusajj fought with truly animal determination. The four of them defended themselves. They were accompanied by a security guard and the 14-year-old son of the younger brother, Mustafa. And this little group managed to hold back a detachment of over 200 American soldiers for three hours!

The matter was resolved only by the use of anti-tank missiles and the collapse of the roof of the villa. The rocket explosions killed Udajj and the bodyguard. Kusajj committed suicide. When the Americans finally entered the building, Mustafa greeted them with arrows. The storming commandos' bullets had punctured him like a sieve. Sometimes even the grandchildren of dictators end up tragically.

***

Stalin's sons did not end up much better. The older one probably threw himself on the high-tension wires, the younger one drank himself to death. And the daughter? You will learn this from the book “Stalin's Daughter. The extraordinary and turbulent life of Svetlana Alliluyeva ", just published by Znak Horyzont.