Amid the cries of too little, too late, the chief of the International Olympic Committee has acknowledged that Iraqi athletes were tortured and said the IOC next week will dissolve the existing Iraqi Olympic Committee that is still headed, officially, by Uday Hussein.

	U.S. Army Sgt. Patrick McDonald looks through the sights of an Austrian-made Steyr assault rifle, part of the private arms collection of Uday Hussein.

Jacques Rogge, IOC president, said Tuesday that the IOC executive board is likely to accept the recommendation of its Ethics Commission, which has provided a report concluding that athletes' claims about torture are credible.

"The recommendation is exactly what I expected it to be," Rogge said.

Former Iraqi athletes who had been tortured on orders of Uday -- son of Saddam Hussein and president of the nation's Olympic committee since 1984 -- were hoping that Rogge would issue an apology for the IOC failing to take action before coalition forces removed the Hussein family from power.

Rumors about the systematic abuse of Iraqi athletes had circulated for more than a decade. At least one former athlete, volleyball player Issam Thamer al-Diwan, said he wrote letters to the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) in the late 1990s, detailing crimes against athletes that violated the Olympic charter. But he said he never heard back from the Kuwait-based group, the IOC's regional partner in the Middle East.

Amnesty International and the United Nations in recent years also had alleged crimes by Uday at the Olympic committee headquarters in Baghdad, without citing athletes.

Since Baghdad fell, reports have emerged that the committee building held a sarcophagus, with long nails pointing inward so victims could be punctured and suffocated, and a metal framework used to apply electric shocks, according to The Associated Press.

Rogge, however, said the IOC could not act upon the allegations until receiving a formal complaint on Dec. 6 by Indict, a London-based human rights group.

"We were not aware of any complaints to the (OCA) so we don't have any information about that," he said. "We don't know what follow up there was on the letters. As far as Amnesty International the United Nations, we were never contacted by those organizations officially."

Charles Forrest, CEO of Indict, contends the IOC just didn't want to deal with a difficult political issue.

Tales of torture

Several former Iraqi athletes interviewed for Outside The Lines say they were tortured under orders by Iraqi National Olympic Committee chief Uday Hussein. Three have agreed to tell their own tales of abuse for ESPN.com: Issam Thamer al-Diwan: Among Iraqi's most decorated volleyball players and coaches, al-Diwan says he was left shackled and contorted in painful positions for days at the whim of Uday Hussein. Sharar Haydar: Imprisoned and tortured after he told INOC officials he planned to retire from the Iraqi national soccer team, Haydar eventually defected to Hungary to escape Uday Hussein's wrath. Raed Ahmed: A 12-time Iraqi national weightlifting champion, Ahmed carried his country's flag at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. It was there, after seeing President Clinton applauding, that he decided to defect during the Games.

"They have to take more responsibility for things like that," Forrest said. "What happened to these athletes was so egregious it calls into question the ability of the IOC to supervise its (national Olympic committees). I just don't see how they can pretend it wasn't their business."

Forrest and some athletes want the IOC to make its ethics commission report public. An IOC spokeswoman said Tuesday the organization has no plans to do that.

Iraq will be the first country in Olympic history to have its national Olympic committee dissolved for violating the IOC charter, according to the IOC. Previously, the strongest actions the IOC had taken against a national committee was suspension, as in the case of Afghanistan under the Taliban, and expulsion, as with South Africa during apartheid.

Eliminating the Iraqi committee -- Uday now is either dead or in hiding -- also gives the IOC the ability to recognize a new group to lead the sports movement in that country. Rogge said the IOC plans to meet later this month with one group of exiled athletes that hopes to facilitate the formation of a new Olympic committee.

That contingent is led by Sharar Haydar, a former national team soccer player who was tortured before leaving the country in 1998. Haydar was elected as president of the Free Iraqi Olympic Group last week in Germany, where about 200 former athletes, coaches and sports officials met to consider the future of sports in Iraq.

Haydar's account of abuse under Uday Hussein was not part of the Indict complaint. But since sharing his story with ESPN.com in December, he has become a widely sought authority for the world media on the horrific experience of Iraqi athletes. He was recently interviewed in London by members of the IOC Ethics Commission, whom he chastised for the IOC not acting years ago.

Haydar said he wants to become president of the new Iraqi Olympic committee but conceded the decision is not his. By IOC rules, that person must be elected by representatives from the nation's sports federations.

"We have to have meetings in Baghdad, and we have to have elections the democratic way," Haydar said. "Then we can rebuild Iraqi sports."

The U.S. government also might play a role in the formation of a new Olympic committee. Forrest said a member of the U.S. transition team in Iraq told him that the Bush Administration is anxious to begin the reconstruction of Iraqi sports. While in Baghdad last week, Forrest introduced a top U.S. official to Raad Hamoudi, another former national team soccer player who wants to replace Uday as the Olympic president.

"The White House is very interested in making sports a priority in Iraq because it wants to get kids off the street and create a national culture again," said Forrest, whose group is funded in part by the U.S. Congress.

Complicating matters, at least one former Olympic official under Uday might have interest in the job of Olympic president, Haydar said. At a Baghdad gym last week where the public came together to discuss the future of Iraqi sports, supporters of the former regime began yelling and became unruly -- until U.S. troops stepped in, according to Forrest, who was in attendance.

The IOC wants a clean break from the past. Its Ethics Commission recommends that "no person who may previously have violated the ethical principles and rules, or been associated with such violations, will be a member of the new committee."

Thamer, the volleyball player, also has expressed interest in the job of Olympic president.

There is no official timeframe for the formation of a new committee. In the meantime, the IOC plans to start identifying top Iraqi athletes so they can help them get ready for the Athens Games next year. Some athletes might be sent to other countries to train. The U.S. Olympic Committee recently expressed the desire to accommodate some Iraqi athletes.

Rogge also said the IOC will help finance the rebuilding of Iraqi facilities, as the IOC did when it spent $15 million in Sarajevo after the Balkans war. He did not offer a figure, noting a survey of the country's sports needs must be made first. The nation's sports facilities are generally in a poor condition, and coalition bombs destroyed the Olympic headquarters.

The IOC executive board will act upon the ethics commission report in Madrid, Spain, on May 15-17 at a regularly scheduled meeting.

Tom Farrey is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at tom.farrey@espn3.com.