Separated at Birth?

Milwaukee Restaurateur Victor Mader

May be Related to Saddam Hussein

The Disassociated Press, Milwaukee, December 6, 2005

By Helen Ratsch

A Chicago-based journalist working for the Disassociated Press has discovered that Milwaukee restaurateur Victor Mader may be related to ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The possible blood connection was reported by Tariq Traupman, the investigative journalist who had previously established Hussein as the likely "second son" of Sheik Hamete Khalifa al-Hamad al-Benengeli, murdered in 1964. The Sheik's three sons had been in hiding since the late 1940s, prompting speculation over the years as to their whereabouts.

The following passages are taken from Traupman's March 18, 2005 Disassociated Press article, "The Lost Sons of Sheik Hamete Khalifa al-Hamad al-Benengeli." Traupman writes of the background to the Sheik's decision to raise his sons incognito:

Threatened by the Haffiz clan, the Sheik sent each of his three sons to a different country, there to have them raised under aliases. This, he believed, was the only way he could ensure the survival of the clan.

The sons grew up separated from their ancestral home, each unknown to the others, each choosing a different path in life. The Sheik's care was such that none of them were even allowed to suspect their true origins: they themselves were led to believe in the false identities he provided for them as infants. But regardless of the relatively safe surroundings in which each was raised, their fiery blood could not be hidden. And as they became men, they would all demonstrate something of their father's character. The Sheik watched them from afar, seeing in each something of his own stubbornness, his own folly.

Of course Sheik al-Hamad al-Benengeli intended eventually to inform his sons of their true ancestry, but for this he sought the proper time. He knew he must first reestablish firmly his clan's ancient claims, and then he would bring his sons back to take their rightful places as princes in a restored order.

The Sheik saw the moment approaching in the mid-1960s. The Haffiz appeared to him weakened: all his intelligence suggested they were more vulnerable than previously. He planned his move, confident that soon the Haffiz would be reduced to subservience. But it was not to be: the Haffiz were watching him; they had anticipated his plans. On the afternoon of March 17^th, 1964, the Sheik and most of his retainers died in a hail of assassins' bullets, gunned down while attending a wedding celebration on neutral clan territory.

Sheik al-Hamad al-Benengeli's death and the death of his most trusted retainers meant the end of any hopes the clan had for restored power. But as regarded his three sons, it meant something more. Because the knowledge of their whereabouts was so restricted, and because those in the know were dead, the three sons would now most likely never learn the truth. From the mid-60s through the 1970s and the 1980s, the al-Hamad al-Benengeli brothers were variously rumored to be dead, or in hiding, or planning a bloody and spectacular revenge. The truth was that they knew nothing at all of their connection to the dead Sheik, their father, and that they each continued their lives in different countries and in wildly different fields: one now a world-famous actor, one a political leader, one a businessman. . . .

Traupman's article, online at the THE MANHATTAN REICHSTAG REVIEW , goes on to reveal how his investigation uncovered the true identity of the three hidden sons.

We repost these paragraphs here with the note that none of the Milwaukee media has taken up this story.

Victor Mader remains unavailable for comment.

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