IT IS the stuff that movies are made of - a young soldier is kidnapped from the frontline and forced to become the body double for Saddam Hussein's eldest son.

As far fetched as it sounds, Latif Yahia claims that is exactly what happened to him.

The story of his life has sold more than a million books and been the subject of a £15million movie, the Devil's Double.

It is a sordid, disturbing tale of torture, rape and the rampaging, violent excesses of Uday Hussein.

Today the mention of Uday's name provokes a bitter outburst from Latif.

He said: "I can forgive anyone but I will never forgive Uday. Even if I see him in hell I will kill him."

In 1987, Latif was serving as a soldier in the Iraqi Army and was whisked from the Iran/Iraq conflict to one of Saddam's palaces.

There Latif was told by Uday that he wanted him to be his "fidai" - or body double.

Uday had gone to the same private school in Baghdad as Latif and the dictator's son had shown himself to be a psychopath in the making.

A teacher who had told him off for taking his sports car and girls to school "mysteriously disappeared".

Latif, 47, claims that Uday told him he had a "free choice" to become his double.

'But when he refused, he was arrested, put in the boot of a car and taken to a cell and tortured.

Latif said: "The torturers shaved my head and eyebrows.

"And they beat me from six in the morning to six at night.

"The men who tortured me told Uday if he didn't take me right away, I would be dead by the next day."

Latif agreed to do it and he claims his face and teeth were altered to make him look even more like Uday.

As part of his "education" he was taught to speak like him and to gauge the inner workings of his mind.

He was shown hours of Uday's trophy videos of tortures he had either ordered or carried out.

The next stage was to witness the real thing.

Latif said: "They did everything that could come into your head.

"Women were raped, men were hanged. Sometimes I was a couple of metres away. I was always sick."

On one occasion Latif stood up to Uday - when he raped and tortured a young bride. Latif was beaten.

He said: "He was worse than a psychopath. On one occasion, he took a beautiful woman and turned her into a barely-breathing hunk of meat.

"She was killed, wrapped in a carpet and dumped in the River Tigris."

But there were some benefits for Latif, as at the click of a finger he could have anything he wanted.

He said: "In the beginning I did enjoy that. I was young and anything I wanted was there.

"I collected watches and I could have 200 of the world's most expensive watches in front of me in an instant."

Latif added: "But then it became a gilded cage."

Uday was a weak, cruel bully who even his own father considered an embarrassment.

Latif said: "When he was drunk, he would cry like a baby and moan about how his father was so hard on him.

"Then if someone came in the room he would go back to the old Uday."

Latif said that he survived 12 assassination attempts on Uday's life before fleeing the country after Uday shot him in a drunken rage.

He has been stateless since his flight from Iraq in 1992.

He attributes this to the fact he refused to work with intelligence services against his country.

Speaking to Latif, it is hard to know what to believe. He is an angry man who is prone to tangential rants and paranoia, and his story is almost impossible to verify.

There have been claims he made the whole thing up but he calls his detractors "pimps" and "liars" and insists the CIA have verified his story.

Latif said: "I have scars all over me.

Do people think I did that myself?" Haytham Ajmaya, a former member of Uday's inner circle, and Raad al-Sheikh, a private guard at Saddam's presidential palace, have denied Latif worked as Uday's body double.

But the film's director, Lee Tamahori, is not fussed and insists he just wanted to make a good movie.

He said: "The more I went into it, the more I didn't really want to tell the truth of Latif's story because we don't really know what that is.

"There's a certain truth out there, but it's driven by Latif.

"In a way, the more I was able to retreat from accuracy, the better the story got.

"I wanted to tell the story of an out-of-control, opulent family in the Middle East. It's a gangster movie."

Latif claims he is psychologically damaged by the years he spent with Uday.

He also claims to be sick of telling his story, although he has an agent and a slick PR machine to help him do just that.

Latif claims he is miserable now, flitting from one country to another and is currently in France.

He said: "In some ways I feel I would rather have been shot by Uday.

"I don't have a country I can call home but I will never go back to Iraq.

"I don't want my dead body to be returned there. I hate that country."

But amazingly Latif believes Iraq was a better country under Saddam's regime.

"Better the devil you know," he said.

"Before we had one Saddam and Uday, now we have hundreds of them.

"I would rather Saddam Hussein was in charge.

"Iraq is built from blood, they don't understand democracy.

"It has to be ruled with an iron fist."

The Devil's Double is released on Blu-ray and DVD on December 26.