Saddam Hussein’s cruise ship turned into a luxury hotel

Besides several million dollars that were spent to buy it, “Saddam Hussein”, the former dictator of Iraq, could not use the “Al-Qadsiyah” cruise and even could not visit it. The ship was later renamed to “Basrah Breeze” and now has become a tourist attraction in Basra, Iraq.

This cruise has now become a tourist place for Iraqi citizens and Persian Gulf countries, especially Kuwaiti tourists.

In this regard, Iraqi sources announced: “Nasim Basra cruise ship was built in 1980 according to Saddam’s personal request and was considered one of the most expensive ships at that time. With mahogany wood and expensive bedrooms, beds and tables, including two small boats”.

The ship has the capacity of dozens of guest bedrooms, a bathroom made of expensive stones, offices and a large hall, as requested by Saddam, however he did not get a chance to use it.

This cruise was transferred to Oman due to the Iran-Iraq war, and in the mid-eighties, Saddam gave this ship to King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the former king of Saudi Arabia, and he named it “Yamame”.

But this expensive and luxurious cruise, which has two engines with a power of 3,000 horsepower and 4 engines for long trips and a fuel tank with a capacity of 200,000 tons of diesel, costs more than 100,000 dollars to keep it; even the rich king of Saudi Arabia did not find it profitable to keep this “white elephant”, so he gifted it to the king of Jordan, and this ship was kept in the south of France until his death in 1999, but it was under Jordan’s control.

After the American attack on Iraq in 2003 and the arrest of Saddam Hussein, the ship’s maintenance company decided to sell it, but the Iraqi government declared the ownership of it and spent one million dollars to prove this issue, finally in 2008, a court in France citing the ownership documents of the ship, returned the cruise to Iraq.
Nasim Basra ship is priced at around 30 million dollars.