[Vision2020] Hussein Hanged!

[J Ford]

Wonder what kind of back-lash we'll be seeing off this bit of news?



BAGHDAD, Iraq -
Saddam Hussein, the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled
Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century and was driven from 
power by a U.S.-led war that left his country in shambles, was taken to the 
gallows clutching a Quran and hanged Saturday.

In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, people danced in the streets while 
others fired guns in the air to celebrate the former dictator's death. The 
government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when 
Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. 
presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi 
leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam 
loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

President Bush called Saddam's execution "the kind of justice he denied the 
victims of his brutal regime."

State-run Iraqiya television news reported that Saddam's half-brother Barzan 
Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the 
Revolutionary Court, also were hanged. However, three officials said only 
Saddam was executed.

"We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser 
Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run Iraqiyah.

Al-Rubaie said Saddam "totally surrendered" and did not resist. He said a 
judge read the sentence to Saddam, who was taken in handcuffs to the 
execution room. When he stood in the execution room, photographs and video 
footage were taken, al-Rubaie said.

"He did not ask for anything. He was carrying a Quran and said: 'I want this 
Quran to be given to this person,' a man he called Bander," he said. 
Al-Rubaie said he did not know who Bander was.

"Saddam was treated with respect when he was alive and after his death," 
al-Rubaie said. "Saddam's execution was 100 percent Iraqi and the American 
side did not interfere."

Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, 
said: "Saddam was taken by force to the gallows but he was composed when 
taken to execution."

He said the government had not decided what to do with Saddam's body.

Mariam al-Rayes, a legal expert and a former member of the Shiite bloc in 
parliament, told Iraqiya television that the execution "was filmed and God 
willing it will be shown. There was one camera present, and a doctor was 
also present there."

Al-Rayes, an al-Maliki ally, did not attend the execution. She said 
Al-Maliki did not attend but was represented by an aide.

The station earlier was airing national songs after the first announcement 
and had a tag on the screen that read "Saddam's execution marks the end of a 
dark period of Iraq's history."

The execution was carried out around the start of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic 
world's largest holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim pilgrimage to 
Mecca, the hajj. Many Muslims celebrate by sacrificing domestic animals, 
usually sheep.

Sunnis and Shiites throughout the world began observing the four-day holiday 
at dawn Saturday, but Iraq's Shiite community — the country's majority — was 
due to start celebrating on Sunday.

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him 
to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from a town 
where assassins tried to kill the dictator in 1982. Iraq's highest court 
rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a 
last-minute court challenge.

Al-Maliki had rejected calls that Saddam be spared, telling families of 
people killed during the dictator's rule that would be an insult to the 
victims.

"Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him, and there will be 
no review or delay in carrying out the sentence," al-Maliki's office quoted 
him as saying during a meeting with relatives before the hanging.

Human Rights Watch criticized the execution, calling Saddam's trial "deeply 
flawed."

"Saddam Hussein was responsible for massive human rights violations, but 
that can't justify giving him the death penalty, which is a cruel and 
inhuman punishment," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's 
International Justice Program.

The hanging of Saddam, who was ruthless in ordering executions of his 
opponents, will keep other Iraqis from pursuing justice against the ousted 
leader.

At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide 
and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 
180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants 
was likely to continue despite his execution.

Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a 
man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds.

Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on 
Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

"Oh, God, you know what Saddam has done! He killed millions of Iraqis in 
prisons, in wars with neighboring countries and he is responsible for mass 
graves. Oh God, we ask you to take revenge on Saddam," said Sheik Sadralddin 
al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in 
Iraq.

On Thursday, two half brothers visited Saddam in his cell, a member of the 
former dictator's defense team, Badee Izzat Aref, told The Associated Press 
by telephone from the United Arab Emirates. He said the former dictator 
handed them his personal belongings.

A senior official at the Iraqi defense ministry said Saddam gave his will to 
one of his half brothers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity 
because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam 
said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against 
the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he 
will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.

One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by 
Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the 
Dujail killings.

The message called on Iraqis to put aside the sectarian hatred that has 
bloodied their nation for a year and voiced support for the Sunni 
Arab-dominated insurgency against U.S.-led forces, saying: "Long live jihad 
and the mujahedeen."

Saddam urged Iraqis to rely on God's help in fighting "against the unjust 
nations" that ousted his regime.

Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities 
maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him 
being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to 
previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything 
to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.

"This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The 
Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of 
Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a 
martyr, he died for the sake of his country."

Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled 
Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, 
saying executions would deter criminals.

Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of 
political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political 
opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.

In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of 
members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the 
slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to 
Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.

Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but 
then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring
Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked 
Iraq's economy.

During that war, as part of the wider campaign against Kurds, the Iraqi 
military used chemical weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja in 
northern Iraq, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians.

The economic troubles from the Iran war led Saddam to invade Kuwait in the 
summer of 1990, seeking to grab its oil wealth, but a U.S.-led coalition 
inflicted a stinging defeat on the Iraq army and freed the Kuwaitis.

U.N. sanctions imposed over the Kuwait invasion remained in place when 
Saddam failed to cooperate fully in international efforts to ensure his 
programs for creating weapons of mass destruction had been dismantled. 
Iraqis, once among the region's most prosperous, were impoverished.

The final blow came when U.S.-led troops invaded in March 2003. Saddam's 
regime fell quickly, but political, sectarian and criminal violence have 
created chaos that has undermined efforts to rebuild Iraq's ruined economy.

While he wielded a heavy hand to maintain control, Saddam also sought to win 
public support with a personality cult that pervaded Iraqi society. 
Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his 
honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office 
buildings, schools, airports and shops and on Iraq's currency.


J  :]

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