Even on the run, Hussein has Iraqis under his 'spell'

One of the Baghdad occultists who catered to the old regime was Abu Ali, a tiny man with an ready grin who earns his living by summoning up a jinn, or genie, for the credulous seeking to regain stolen property or lift curses.

"Uday and his guards had an all-night party and fell asleep at dawn, dead drunk. When they woke up they found that somebody had stolen all the money from their pockets. Uday sent someone to me to find the money. I discovered the thief, and they said Uday punished him, though I don't know exactly what happened to him," he says.

In addition to tracking down Uday's unfortunate thief, Ali claims to have lifted a curse on a female relative of Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, Hussein's cousin and presidential secretary.

Ali recalls how, one day, Hussein's security agents turned up at his house, accusing him of plotting to use his juju against the president.

He says he convinced them he was doing no such thing, then put a curse on the neighbor who shopped him to the police. She was paralyzed after a blood vessel burst in her brain, he boasted.

Alharith Hassan, a psychologist at Baghdad University's Department of Parapsychology, has spent years trying to scientifically debunk such superstitions, a rationalist crusade which cost his department dear in slashed funding under Hussein's occultist regime.

He said Iraqi people had become very susceptible to such myths in the long years cut off from the outside world, and suffering brutal oppression from which the only outlet was religion and sects, which the country's president - whose peasant mother used to read the future with seashells - openly endorsed.

Nearly two thirds of the patients coming to see Mr. Hassan have already visited shamans, who try to exorcise genies with spells and often viciously beat their clients.

"It's all a lot of gibberish," says Hassan, who was however careful not to dismiss the genie, a mythical creature mentioned in the holy Koran.

In such a climate, myths of Hussein's supernatural prowess have survived his regime's demise, and contribute to the climate of fear still hindering reconstruction.

"When they pulled down Saddam's statue, lots of men were jumping on it like monkeys," says car-dealer Mr. Mohammed, a Hussein loyalist. "Then a child came up and kissed the head. Why? I think the child was an angel."

But the magic ran out for Uday and Abdel Hamid, now dead or in custody, and Hussein's legendary luck is also questioned by some occult practitioners.

While putting a man seeking his stolen car in a trance, Ali asked his genie if Hussein would be arrested. The man's hand slowly twisted palm outward.

"Saddam will be caught. I know he has a stone against bullets, but they will capture him," says Ali.

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