كتب الكاتب الفاتح جبرا المتوفرة بمعرض الدوحة
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 Saddam Hussein executed
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7.45am update
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Saddam Hussein executed
Staff and agencies
Saturday December 30, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Photograph: AP
Saddam Hussein was executed at dawn today following his conviction by an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity.
The death sentence was carried out at a former military intelligence headquarters in a Shia district of Baghdad at 6am local time (3am GMT).
One of those who witnessed the hanging, Sami al-Askari, an advisor to the Iraqi prime minister, said Saddam struggled when he was taken from his cell in a US military prison but was composed in his last moments. He expressed no remorse.
The former dictator, dressed in black, refused a hood and said he wanted the Koran he carried to the gallows to be given to a friend. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab'," Mr Askari told the Associated Press.
In a prepared statement, George Bush cautioned that Saddam's execution would not stop the violence in Iraq but said it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."
The office of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, released a statement that said Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people. The Iraqi state broadcaster, Iraqiya, vowed to air film of the execution.
The hanging was followed by reports of a car bombing with many casualties in the Shia Muslim city of Kufa.
In Sadr City, a major Shia Muslim area in Baghdad, people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted.
The execution, which became imminent after his appeal was this week rejected, brought to an end the life of one of the Middle East's most brutal dictators.
Launching the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, campaigns against the Kurds and putting down the southern Shia revolt that followed the 1991 Gulf war - triggered by his invasion of Kuwait - put the casualties attributable to his rule into the hundreds of thousands.
But the conviction that led to his hanging was for a relatively lower figure - the deaths of 148 men and boys from the Shia Muslim town of Dujail, where members of an opposition group had made a botched attempt to assassinate him in 1982.
In Iraq opinion was divided sharply along sectarian lines, with Sunni Arabs warning of "bloodbaths in the streets".
Even among Shia Muslims, terrorised for decades by Saddam, there was a sense of hopelessness. "They can kill him 10 times but it won't bring safety to the streets because there is no state of law," said one Shia taxi driver who gave his name as Shawkat.
In the Kurdish north, jubilation was tempered by the fear of deeper sectarian tensions and disappointment that Saddam would now not be able to stand trial for other charges including the gas attack on the town of Halabja that killed 5,000 people in 1988.
"It would have been much better for the execution to have taken place in Halabja, not in Baghdad," said Barham Khorsheed, a Kurd.
Many critics dismissed the conduct of the trial and Saddam Hussein's defence team had accused the Iraqi government of interfering in the proceedings. The latter complaint was backed by the US-based Human Rights Watch.
The process that ended with his execution began with the launch of the 2003 US-led war to disarm Iraq's claimed weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Bush committed the US to a policy of regime change and Saddam was ousted within weeks of the invasion. Just over eight months later, US forces captured him from his hiding place in a hole near his hometown of Tikrit.
Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator in Iraq, told a press conference "We got him". For the first time, he showed video footage of a dishevelled former dictator, with unkempt hair and beard, being inspected by military doctors.
His rise was through the Ba'ath party. The Ba'ath, who had participated in previous coups against Iraqi governments, took complete power in 1968.
Saddam was deputy president and regime strongman, responsible for internal security. But used his position to build a powerbase allowing him to supplant Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as president in 1979. On taking power he launched a massive purge of the party.
Iraq under Saddam was under the thuggish rule of the dictator and, frequently, his relatives and cronies from Tikrit.
Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar were also sentenced to death at the close of the Dujail trial.
Iraqiya television initially reported the two were also hanged today but officials later said only Saddam was executed
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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Saddam Hussein
Brutal and opportunist dictator of Iraq, he wreaked havoc on his country, the Middle East and the world
David Hirst
Saturday December 30, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was executed this morning at the age of 69, may not yield many general biographies - he was personally too uninteresting for that - but he will be a case study for political scientists for years to come. For he was the model of a certain type of developing world despot, who was, for over three decades, as successful in his main ambition, which was taking and keeping total power, as he was destructive in exercising it.
Yet at the same time, he was commonplace and derivative. Stalin was his exemplar. The likeness came from more than conscious emulation: he already resembled him in origin, temperament and method. Like him, he was unique less in kind than in degree, in the extraordinary extent to which, if the more squalid forms of human villainy are the sine qua non of the successful tyrant, he embodied them. Like Stalin, too, he had little of the flair or colour of other 20th-century despots, little mental brilliance, less charisma, no redeeming passion or messianic fervour; he was only exceptional in the magnitude of his thuggery, the brutality, opportunism and cunning of the otherwise dull, grey apparatchik.
His rise to power was no more accidental than Stalin's. If he had not mastered Iraq as he did, someone very similar probably would have, and very probably also from Tikrit. Saddam's peculiar fortune was that, on his political majority, this small, drab town, on the Tigris upstream from Baghdad, was already poised to wrest a very special role in Iraqi history.
Saddam was born in the nearby village of Owja, into the mud house of his uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, and into what a Tikriti contemporary of his called a world "full of evil". His father, Hussein al-Majid, a landless peasant, had died before his birth, and his mother, Sabha, could not support the orphan, until she took a third husband.
Hassan Ibrahim took to extremes local Bedouin notions of a hardy upbringing. For punishment, he beat his stepson with an asphalt-covered stick. Thus, from earliest infancy, was Saddam nurtured - like a Stalin born into very similar circumstances - in the bleak conviction that the world is a congenitally hostile place, life a ceaseless struggle for survival, and survival only achieved through total self-reliance, chronic mistrust and the imperious necessity to destroy others before they destroy you.
The sufferings visited on the child begat the sufferings the grown man, warped, paranoid, omnipotent, visited on an entire people. Like Stalin, he hid his emotions behind an impenetrable facade of impassivity; but he assuredly had emotions of a virulent kind - an insatiable thirst for vengeance on the world he hated.
To fend off attack by other boys, Saddam carried an iron bar. It became the instrument of his wanton cruelty; he would bring it to a red heat, then stab a passing animal in the stomach, splitting it in half. Killing was considered a badge of courage among his male relatives. Saddam's first murder was of a shepherd from a nearby tribe. This, and three more in his teens, were proof of manhood.
The small-town thug possessed all the personal qualifications he might need to earn his place in the 20th-century's pantheon of tyrants. And the small town of Tikrit, lying in the heart of the Sunni Muslim "triangle" of central Iraq furnished the operational ones, too. Orthodox Sunni Arabs are only a small minority, 15% at most, of Iraq's population, outnumbered by the Shias of the south, 60% at least, and the Kurds of the mountainous north. Yet they always dominated Iraq's political life.
Thanks partly to the decline of traditional river traffic, Tikritis had taken to supplying the British-controlled Iraqi state with a disproportionate number of its soldiers. With time and plentiful purges, they emerged within the army as a distinct group; a preponderance which had been fortuitous at first finally became so great they could deliberately enlarge it. A close-knit minority within the Sunni minority, they exploited ties of region, clan and family to seize control of the army, then the state. Saddam, perfect recruit to the sinister, violent, conspiratorial underworld that was Iraqi politics, positioned himself at the heart of this process.
He himself was never a soldier, but he used a formidable array of Tikritis who were, and Ba'athists to boot. Ba'athism was a radical, pan-Arab nationalist doctrine then sweeping the region. Though doubtless impelled in that direction by the extreme, chauvinist beliefs of his uncle Khairallah, who had been dismissed from the army and imprisoned for five years for his part in a 1941 attack on an RAF base near Baghdad, it was mainly out of convenience, not conviction, that Saddam joined the party; strong in Tikrit and the Sunni "triangle", dedicated to force not persuasion, it readily appealed to a man of his ambition and temper.
In theory he remained a Ba'athist to his dying day, but for him Ba'athism was always an apparatus, never an ideology: no sooner was command of the one complete than he dispensed entirely with the other. For next to brutality, opportunism was his chief trait. Not Stalin himself could have governed with such whimsy, or lurched, ideologically, politically, strategically, from one extreme to another with quite such ease, regularity, and disastrous consequences, and yet still, incredibly, retain command to the end.
The Ba'ath, and other "revolutionary" parties, had come into their own with the overthrow, in 1958, of the "reactionary", British-created Hashemite monarchy. They quickly fell out with General Kassem's new regime and with each other, rivalries that expressed themselves mainly in streetfighting and assassinations. That was the way of life that Saddam fell into as a street-gang leader, after going, in 1955, to live with his uncle in Baghdad to study at Karkh high school.
Saddam first achieved national prominence in 1959 with a bungled attempt to kill Kassem. He seems to have lost his nerve and opened fire prematurely. But though his role was less than glorious, it became an essential component of the Saddam legend - that of the dauntless young revolutionary extracting a bullet from his leg with his own hand, and, with security forces in hot pursuit, swimming the icy waters of the Euphrates, knife between clenched teeth, before galloping to safety across the Syrian desert; eventually fetching up in Cairo, where his university law studies were terminated by the next political convulsion back home - Kassem's overthrow in February 1963.
Securing a share in the new regime, the Ba'athists lost it the following November when they fell out with the other parties. Pushed back into the underground, Saddam took what subsequently turned out to be his first, concrete step towards supreme office. In 1964, he formed the Jihaz al-Hunein, the Instrument of Yearning, the first, embryonic version of a terror apparatus of which, in its full fruition, Stalin would not have been ashamed.
It was an outgrowth of the party. That meant that, through it, Saddam, though not an officer, could now see his way to the summit. But at this stage his main asset was his collaboration with his fellow-Tikriti, Brigadier Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr. Thanks to a combination of Bakr's traditional military means and Saddam's new, "civilian" ones, the pair pulled off the "glorious July 1968 Revolution".
At 31, as deputy secretary general of the Ba'ath party, Saddam was the power behind President Bakr's throne. But at first he assumed, like Stalin in his similar period, a disarmingly modest and retiring demeanour as he lay the foundations of what he called a new kind of rule; "With our party methods," he said, "there is no chance for anyone who disagrees with us to jump on a couple of tanks and overthrow the government." Gradually he subordinated the army to the party.
There was nothing modest about the Ba'athists' inaugural reign of terror; few knew it then, but it was chiefly his handiwork, and quite different from anything hitherto experienced in a country already notorious for its harsh political tradition. Saddam's henchmen presided over "revolutionary tribunals" that sent hundreds to the firing squad on charges of puerile, trumped up absurdity. They called on "the masses" to "come and enjoy the feast": the hanging of "Jewish spies" in Liberation Square amid ghoulish festivities and bloodcurdling official harangues.
That was the public face. Behind it were such places as the Palace of the End. So called because King Faisal died there in the 1958 Revolution, it was now more aptly named than ever. Saddam's first security chief, Nadhim Kzar, had turned it into a chamber of horrors. But Kzar, a Shia, nursed a grudge against his Sunni patrons; in 1973, he turned against them; Saddam, Bakr and a host of top Tikritis had a very narrow escape indeed.
Thereafter the badly shaken number two relied almost entirely on Tikritis; the more sensitive the post, the more closely related its incumbent would be to himself. Meanwhile, with guile and infinite patience, he worked his way towards his supreme goal. Purge followed judicious purge, first aimed at the Ba'athists' rivals, then the army, then the party, then influential, respected, or strategically located people whom he deemed most liable, at some point, to cry halt to his inexorable ascension.
When, in June 1979, all was set for him to depose and succeed the ailing Bakr, he could have accomplished it with bloodless ease. But he wilfully, gratuitously chose blood in what was a psychological as well as a symbolic necessity. He had to inaugurate the "era of Saddam Hussein" with a rite whose message would be unmistakable: there had arisen in Mesopotamia a ruler who, in his barbaric splendour, cruelty and caprice, was to yield nothing to its despots of old.
Only now did he emerge, personally and very publicly, as accuser, judge and executioner in one. He called an extraordinary meeting of senior party cadres. They were solemnly informed that "a gang disloyal to the party and the revolution" had mounted a "base conspiracy" in the service of "Zionism and the forces of darkness", and that all the "traitors" were right there, with them, in the hall. One of their ringleaders, brought straight from prison, made a long and detailed confession of his "horrible crime".
Saddam, puffing on a Havana cigar, calmly watched the proceedings as if they had nothing to do with him. Then he took the podium. He began to read out the "traitors'" names, slowly and theatrically; he seemed quite overcome as he did so, pausing only to light his cigar or wipe away his tears with a handkerchief. All 66 "traitors" were led away one by one.
Thus did the new president make inaugural use of that essential weapon of the ultimate tyrant, the occasional flamboyant, contemptuous act of utter lawlessness, turpitude or unpredictability, and the enforced prostration of his whole apparatus, in praise and rejoicing, before it. Those of the audience who had not been named showed their relief with hysterical chants of gratitude and a baying for the blood of their fallen comrades.
Saddam then called on ministers and party leaders to join him in personally carrying out the "democratic executions"; every party branch in the country sent an armed delegate to assist them. It was, he said, "the first time in the history of revolutionary movements without exception, or perhaps of human struggle, that over half the supreme leadership had taken part in a tribunal" which condemned the other half. "We are now," he confided, "in our Stalinist era."
But in one way he had actually surpassed his exemplar. Upon entering the Kremlin, the former Georgian streetfighter had at least kept himself fittingly aloof from his "great terror". Not Saddam. Newly exalted, he was to remain down-to-earth too; new caliph of Baghdad, but, direct participant in his own terror, very much the Tikriti gangster, too.
The "Leader, President, Struggler" now emerged as a regional and international actor with the disproportionate capacity for promoting well-being and order or wreaking havoc which Iraq's great strategic and political importance, vast oil wealth, relatively educated citizenry and powerful army conferred on him. With U-turns, blunders and megalomaniac whimsies, he chose havoc; he wreaked it on the region and the world, but above all on Iraq itself.
In September 1980 he went to war against Iran. It was known as "Saddam's Qadisiyah", after the Arabs' early Islamic victory over the Persians. His official, strictly limited war aims revolved round the Shatt al-Arab estuary and his determination to renegotiate the "Algiers agreement" he had concluded a mere five years before. A dire emergency had forced that humiliation on him: the Iraqi army had been close to defeat in its campaign to suppress the last great, Iranian-backed Kurdish uprising led by Mullah Mustafa Barazani. The quid pro quo for Algiers had been the American-inspired withdrawal of the Shah's support for Barazani.
His "Qadisiyah", first of his spectacular volte-faces, was now to avenge the humiliation. But he also had a higher, unofficial aim: to weaken or destroy the Ayatollah Khomeini's new-born Islamic Republic, or at least its subversive potentialities in Iraq itself. For Iraq's Shia majority now saw in their Iranian co-religionists a means of bringing down Sunni minority rule. Hitherto closely bound to the Soviet Union, Saddam now bid for the west's favour as the Shah's natural heir as the "strong man" of the Gulf.
In the terrible eight-year struggle that followed, the Ayatollah's Iran remorselessly turned the tables on the Iraqi aggressor, recovered all its conquered territory, and, in a series of fearsome "human wave" offensives, tried to conquer Iraq, and turn it into the world's second "Islamic Republic".
That would have been a geopolitical upheaval of incalculable consequences. To forestall it, the west, beneath a mask of outward neutrality, put its weight behind one unlovely regime because it found the other unlovelier still. While the frightened, oil-rich Gulf furnished cash, the west furnished conventional weapons, and the means to manufacture a whole array of unconventional ones: nuclear, chemical and biological. Almost miraculously, Saddam held out, until, in July 1988, Khomeini drank from what he called "the poisoned chalice" of a ceasefire.
Of course, Saddam hailed this, his "first Gulf war", as a victory. Though what possible victory there could have been in an outcome which, in addition to hundreds of thousands of dead, wounded and captured, immense physical destruction and economic havoc, left Iraq on a permanent war footing, still seeking to renegotiate the status of the Shatt al-Arab?
Even if he could not officially admit it, he had good reason to give his people some recompense for their sufferings. He made as if to offer them two things, material betterment and some democratisation. But he cannot have been serious about either. Thanks to the ravages of his "Qadisiyah", he had no money for economic reconstruction. And, in another great volte-face, he staged a virtual counter-revolution against the one ideal of Ba'athism, its socialism, which he had made a passable attempt to put into practice. Worse, the main beneficiaries of the economic revisionism were the Tikriti pillars of his regime, now corrupt as well as despotic.
With the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu, the east European dictator he most closely resembled, Saddam abandoned talk of "the new pluralist trends" he discerned in the world. Indeed, he persisted, more surrealistically than ever, in the despot's law: the more disastrous his deeds the more they should be glorified. His cult of personality expressed itself most overbearingly in monumental architecture, where the public - an amazing array of bizarre or futuristic memorials to his "Qadisiyah" - merged with the private (his proliferating palaces) in grandiose tribute to all the attributes, bordering on the divine, ascribed to him.
It reflected a degree of control that enabled him, amazingly, to embark, within two years of the first, on his "second Gulf war", and then, more amazingly still, to survive that yet greater calamity in its turn. It was a resort to the classic diversionary expedient, a flashy foreign adventure, of the dictator in trouble at home. He cast himself once again as the pan-Arab champion, boasting that, having secured the Arabs' eastern flank against the Persians, he was now turning his attention westwards, with the aim of settling scores with the Arabs' other great foe, the Zionists. He threatened "to burn half of Israel" with his weapons of mass destruction, thrilling large segments of an Arab public desperately short of credible heroes.
But instead of Israel, it was Kuwait which, on the night of August 2 1990, Saddam attacked, or, rather, gobbled up in its entirety. Hardly had he done that than, to appease Iran, he unilaterally re-accepted the Algiers agreement on the Shatt al-Arab. It was the most breathtaking of his volte-faces; even as he dragged his people into another unprovoked war, he was in effect telling them that, in the first, they had shed all that blood, sweat and tears for nothing.
The Kuwait invasion was the ultimate excess, whimsy and Promethean delusion of the despot: the belief that he could get away with anything. Yet nothing had encouraged this excess like the west's indulgence of his earlier ones. Sure, it had never loved him. But neither had it protested at his use of chemical weapons against Iran. It had contented itself with little more than a wringing of hands when he went on to gas his own people.
In March 1988, in revenge for an Iranian territorial gain, he wiped out 5,000 Kurdish inhabitants of Halabja; then, the war over, he wiped out several thousand more in "Operation Anfal", his final, genocidal attempt to solve his Kurdish problem. In effect, the west's reaction had been to treat the Kurds as an internal Iraqi affair; exterminating them en masse may have briefly stirred the international conscience, but it tended, if anything, to reinforce the existing international order.
But now that he was so ungratefully, so shockingly threatening this order itself, the west finally awoke to the true nature of the monster it had nurtured. Before long, Saddam faced an American-led army of half a million men assembled in the Arabian desert.
He did not blench. And for a few months he won adulation as the latter-day Saladin, who, after Kuwait, would go on to liberate Palestine. He said his army was eagerly awaiting the coalition's great land offensive to reconquer Kuwait; in "the mother of all battles", Iraq would "water the desert with American blood".
But he stood no chance. For a month, allied aircraft rained high-tech devastation on his army, air force, economic and strategic infrastructure. He panicked, ordering his army's withdrawal from Kuwait. It was not enough for the allies. As their ground forces swept almost unopposed through Kuwait, then into southern Iraq, the withdrawal became a rout. They could have marched on Baghdad. He caved in utterly, accepting every demand that the allies made. Only then did they cease their advance.
They had shattered most of his "million-man army" except for its elite Republican Guards, held in reserve to defend the regime against the wrath of the people. And this time their wrath was truly unleashed. The two oppressed majorities, Shias and Kurds, staged their great uprisings. These began spontaneously, when a Shia tank commander, having fled from Kuwait to Basra, positioned his vehicle in front of one of those gigantic, ubiquitous murals of the tyrant and addressed it thus: "What has befallen us of defeat, shame and humiliation, Saddam, is the result of your follies, your miscalculations and your irresponsible actions."
But the uprisings foundered on the rock of Saddam's residual strength, western betrayal and, in the south, their own disorganisation, vengeful excesses and failure to distance themselves from Iranian expansionist designs. Exploiting the Sunni minority's fear that if he went, so would many of them, in the most horrible of massacres, Saddam sent in his guards. Dreadful atrocities accompanied the slow reconquest of the south. And when the Guards turned north, the whole population of "liberated" Kurdistan fled in panic through snow and bitter cold to Iran and Turkey.
The television images of that grim stampede caught the measure of western betrayal. Four weeks previously, President George Bush senior had urged the Iraqis to rise up. But when they did so, he turned a deaf ear to their pleas for help. "New Hitler" Saddam might be, but he was also the only barrier against the possible break-up of Iraq itself. Saudi Arabia, for one, could not tolerate the prospect. It told the US it would work to replace Saddam with an army officer who would keep the country in safe, authoritarian, Sunni Muslim hands.
Saddam was saved again. And for 12 more years he hung on, as his people sank into social, economic and political miseries incomparably greater than those which had propelled him into Kuwait. Tikriti solidarity continued to preserve him against putsch and assassination. And never again would the people stage an uprising without assurance of success. Only the west could provide that. But the West, preoccupied with other crises, was paralysed.
It would, or could, not withdraw from what, after the Gulf war, it had put in place, a curious, contradictory amalgam of UN sanctions that penalised the Iraqi people, not its rulers, a moral commitment to safeguard "liberated" Kurdistan, an ineffectual "no-fly zone" over the Shia south.
But it also feared to go further in and, completing the logic of what it had begun, join forces with a serious Iraqi opposition that could bring the tyrant down and keep the country in one piece thereafter. This was inertia, which, the longer it lasted, the more dearly it would pay for in the end. Every now and then confrontations erupted between the world's only superpower and this most exasperating of "rogue states"; they arose out of Saddam's attempts to break out of his "box", via some renewed threat to Kuwait, an incursion into the western-protected Kurdish enclave, or - most persistently - showdowns over the UN's mission to divest Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.
In the last of them, in 1998, his elite military and security apparatus took a four-day pounding from the air. Heavy though this was, it proved to be the last, symbolic flourish behind which the Clinton administration acquiesced in what, with the expulsion of the arms inspectors, was a diplomatic victory for Saddam.
In the end, it was less his own misdeeds that brought the despot down, but those of the man who, for a while, supplanted him as America's ultimate villain, Osama bin Laden. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, but he fell victim none the less to the crusading militarism, the new doctrine of the pre-emptive strike, the close identification with a rightwing Israeli agenda, that now took full possession of the administration of George Bush junior. Iraq became the first target among the three states (with Iran and North Korea) that it had placed on its "axis of evil", and with the launch of the invasion by the US, UK and their allies in March 2003, Saddam's days were numbered.
However, three years passed between his capture and his execution yesterday. In December 2003, following a tip-off from an intelligence source, US forces found him hiding in an underground refuge on a farm near Tikrit, where his life had begun. It was the middle of the next year before he was transferred to Iraqi custody, and in July 2004 the former president appeared in court to hear criminal charges. Another year passed before the prosecution was ready to proceed with counts related to the massacre in the small Shia town of Dujail in 1982. The trial at last opened in October 2005 and the proceedings were immediately adjourned. Saddam, who two months earlier had sacked his legal team, pleaded innocence. A second trial on war crimes charges relating to the 1988 Anfal campaign opened on August 21 this year. He refused to enter a plea, and episodes of black farce, which characterised his earlier appearances in court, recurred, with the judge switching of his microphone because of his interruptions, and ejecting him from the court four times. The trial was adjourned on October 11, but on November 5 the court handed down a guilty verdict and sentenced Saddam to death by hanging.
Saddam married Saida Khairallah in 1963. Their sons Uday and Qusay (obituaries, July 23 2003) were killed by American forces; they had three daughters.
· Saddam Hussein abd al-Majid, politician, born April 28 1937; died December 30 2006.
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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Experts on Iraq react to the execution of Saddam Hussein
Saturday December 30, 2006
The Guardian
Rosemary Hollis, director of research at Chatham House, London
It's tawdry. It's not going to achieve anything because of the way the trial was conducted and the way the occupation was conducted. Life in Iraq has become so precarious that many people are saying it was safer under Saddam Hussein - it makes the whole thing look like a poke in the eye as opposed to closure or some kind of contribution to the future of Iraq. The purpose should have been to see justice done in a transparent manner ... the trial was gruesome, occasionally farcical, and failed to fulfil its promise of giving satisfaction.
Mishkat al-Moumin, former environment minister in transitional Iraqi government, now at the Middle East Institute in Washington
Ordinary people who were abused by him will be relieved. His opponents will be relieved when he is finally gone. He abused people severely and his abuses were on a nationwide scale. He killed so many people. At the political level, those who support him might try to take revenge but on the people's side they will feel they have seen justice done.
Kamil Mahdi, Iraqi expatriate, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Exeter university
Quite honestly, I don't think much of it any more, given what's happening in Iraq. It will be taken as an American decision. The worst thing is that it's an issue which, in an ideal situation, should have unified Iraq but the Americans have succeeded in dividing the Iraqis.
Toby Dodge, expert on Iraq at Queen Mary College, London university
The new elite were bound to go ahead with the execution because they suffered at his hands. In the long term, though, this means very little in terms of drawing a line under the last four years of occupation or creating a new Iraq. In choosing to kill him, the current government of Iraq have simply reproduced Iraqi history instead of stepping away from the past ... it completes the Islamicisation of the insurgency.
Chris Doyle, director, Council for Arab-British Understanding
For Bush, Blair and their diminishing brotherhood of diehard supporters, Saddam's demise is their sole concrete victory in Iraq in almost four years. This should have been the crowning glory of their efforts, but instead it may pose yet another risk to their demoralised troops. For Iraqis, some will see it as a symbol of the death of the ancien regime. For some Sunnis, Saddam's death represents the final nail in the coffin of their fall from power. But Iraqis may also see this as the humiliation of Iraq as a whole, that their president, however odious, was toppled by outside powers, and is executed effectively at others' instigation
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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سيناتور أميركي: لسنا على طريق النصر في العراق
واشنطن ـ ا.ف. ب: رأى السيناتور الديمقراطي كارل ليفين، الذي سيتولى الشهر المقبل رئاسة لجنة القوات المسلحة في مجلس الشيوخ، ان الاميركيين ليسوا «على طريق النصر» في العراق، موضحا ان المجلس سيبدأ الشهر المقبل جلسات استماع حول الوضع في هذا البلد.
وقال ليفين، لشبكة التلفزيون الاخبارية الاميركية «سي ان ان»، اول من امس، «لسنا على طريق النصر في العراق». واضاف «اعتقد ان زيادة عدد الجنود وارسال قوات اضافية لا يؤدي سوى الى جرنا الى اتجاه خاطئ». ورأى السيناتور الديمقراطي ان «زيادة عدد الجنود الاميركيين في العراق، يوجه رسالة سيئة الى العراقيين، الذين سيتكلون بذلك علينا بدلا من الاعتماد على قواتهم». واكد ليفين ان التوجه الرئيسي يجب ان يكون خفض القوات (في العراق) واي فكرة لا تندرج في اطار خفض القوات لا تستحق الدراسة».
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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12.30pm
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Broadcast omits moment of Saddam's death
Agencies
Saturday December 30, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
An Iraqi family watches television in their home in Basra, as Iraqi state TV transmits a video of the execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Photograph: Nabil al-Jurani/AP
Iraqi television today broadcast footage of Saddam Hussein's last minutes alive but stopped short of showing his actual hanging.
The images - intended to prove to the Iraqi people that their former dictator was executed - were aired on the state-funded Iraqiya television channel less than six hours after the death sentence was carried out.
Television pictures to the accompaniment of upbeat music were cut following the placing of the noose around Saddam's neck.
Later pictures on the Massar and Biladi stations, which are affiliated with the Shia Muslim Dawa party of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, showed what the stations said was Saddam's corpse.
The grainy, low-quality footage had a corpse in a shroud lying with his neck twisted to one side at an awkward angle, and what appeared to be blood or a bruise on his left cheek.
The footage of the moments before the execution had shown a group of guards dressed in civilian clothes and wearing ski masks helping Saddam up a small metal staircase where a cloth was put around his neck before stepping onto the trap door.
The hangman, wearing a beige leather jacket, then places the thick rope over Saddam's head and tightened the noose on the left side of his neck. The hangman exchanged a few words with Saddam, who nodded in return.
One of those who witnessed the hanging, Sami al-Askari, an adviser to Mr Maliki, said Saddam's death was quick.
"One of the guards pulled a lever and he dropped half a meter into a trap door. We heard his neck snap instantly and we even saw a small amount of blood around the rope," he told Reuters.
Saddam was sentenced to death on November 5 for crimes against humanity. The conviction followed a trial over the deaths of 148 men and boys in the Shia Muslim town of Dujail.
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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Frame by frame: last moments of a tyrant
· Saddam Hussein executed at dawn yesterday
· Blair silent; world leaders give guarded response
· Family announces burial plans
· Up to 70 are killed as car and bus bombs explode in Baghdad
Ned Temko and Peter Beaumont
Sunday December 31, 2006
The Observer
The opening of a trapdoor and the sudden snap of a hangman's noose at dawn yesterday brought an extraordinary end to a political era in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's execution, however, brought no early end to the country's spiral of violence. Within hours, a series of car bombs killed dozens of people in Baghdad and south of the capital.
As the former dictator's body was reportedly flown out of Baghdad for burial, there were also signs of continued political crisis.
Washington's response to Saddam's death was only cautiously optimistic about Iraq's future. Britain's was even more ambivalent. Tony Blair made no comment at all, leaving the Foreign Office to issue a statement.
For the outside world, the most powerful image of Saddam's last day on earth was the official footage of him being led to the gallows, where a masked guard placed a rope around his neck - images that within hours had reached millions on the internet and fanned protests from overseas politicians and human rights activists.
Yet for most Iraqis, the more compelling image was a grainier, shakier one apparently taken by a mobile phone. Broadcast on local television, it showed a white-shrouded body, neck twisted to one side. So commanding was Saddam's hold over the country that he terrorised for more than two decades - and so deep the tides of suspicion in the violently fractured country he has left behind - that many ordinary people clearly sought proof he was really dead.
Saddam's end finally came in the chill minutes just before dawn, at the start of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha, at Camp Justice, a former military intelligence barracks in north Baghdad. In the hours that followed, details of the execution emerged from official witnesses. Foes and former followers, rivals and victims of his cruelty, reacted to the news with equal passion - and attention inexorably shifted to what his death would mean for the country's future.
Nuri al-Maliki, the Shia head of the country's beleaguered unity government, called on Saddam's former Baath party followers to 'help in rebuilding an Iraq for all Iraqis'.
The response from most world leaders was a mix of recognition of Saddam's crimes, unease over the use of the gallows and hope that Iraq might now move towards greater conciliation, stability and peace. Yet the three bombs that exploded after the hanging - two of them in cars, one in a minibus - left a total of nearly 70 people dead by nightfall yesterday.
Significantly, the official response to the execution from US President George W Bush coupled support for his hanging with a clear sense of the obstacles ahead.
With none of the sense of triumph that marked the Americans' capture of Saddam from his underground hideout three years ago, Bush said: 'Saddam Hussein's execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops. Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself and be an ally in the war on terror.'
Tony Blair made no immediate comment, and Downing Street said he was content to associate himself with the equivocal response offered by the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett. In apparent sensitivity to controversy in Britain over the decision to put Saddam to death - and the graphic video images of the moments before his execution - she stressed the Iraqis were responsible for that choice.
'I welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein has been tried by an Iraqi court for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed against the Iraqi people. He has now been held to account,' she said. But she added Britain did not support the death penalty 'in Iraq or anywhere else' and had made that position 'very clear' to Baghdad.
Confirmation that Saddam had been hanged followed days of feverish rumour and speculation, sparked by the decision on Boxing Day by Iraq's appeals court to uphold his death sentence.
Dressed in black overcoat and trousers, Saddam, 69, was said to have struggled briefly when handed over from American custody to the Iraqis at 5.30am, Baghdad time. In a gripping account of the final minutes, al-Maliki's national security adviser, a witness at the execution, spoke of a 'broken and weak' Saddam, but also said he had remained unrepentant and refused the offer of a hood before the trapdoor was opened.
Saddam was led into the small gallows chamber in handcuffs, accompanied by a judge, several Iraqi ministers and a doctor. 'The judge took him through the conviction, what he was convicted of,' al-Rubaie said. Initially serene, Saddam was said to have become agitated when he realised his last minutes were being videoed for official release. 'He started saying: "Long live Islam, down with the West",' according to al-Rubaie.
But as he was taken to the gallows, Saddam's mood again changed. 'They tied his hands behind his back and it was a little bit tight and I instructed the guard to loosen it up and they tied his legs and carried him up to the gallows,' al-Rubaie said. 'He went up and he was offered the hood but he turned it down. He said: "No, there's no need for that."' As the noose was drawn around the condemned man's neck, a guard began to read the Muslim declaration of faith, to which Saddam responded: 'La illaha ilallah, wa Muhammadu rasu Allah' - 'There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.'
'He repeated this twice and then he went down in no time. It was so quick, and totally painless, it was over in a second. There was no movement after that,' al-Rubaie said.
There were, he acknowledged, spontaneous scenes of celebration in the room once the deed had been done. Another witness recalled that one of the guards had accused Saddam of having 'destroyed' the country.
After almost three decades of rule that left hundred of thousands of Iraqis dead in wars or as victims of his secret police, Saddam was convicted and executed for his role in the murder of 148 Shia men and boys from the village of al-Dujail, following an attack on his motorcade there in 1982.
Two co-defendants sentenced to death over al-Dujail, Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and a former chief judge, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, are to be executed after the end of the four-day feast that traditionally ends the annual Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.
The decision to put Saddam to death so quickly after the appeals court ruling was seen as underscoring the government's concern about the risk of trouble if it left him alive. The result was the abandonment of plans for a second trial of Saddam, potentially key in building a broader sense of national unity, for the killing of 180,000 Kurds in 1988.
The official video footage of a shackled Saddam's last moments, broadcast on the state-funded al-Iraqiya TV, did not show the execution. The images of the shrouded aftermath were later shown on two local Shia stations.
By late last night, one of Saddam's lawyers said his body had been flown to his home town of Tikrit. But citing the former leader's own wishes, and 'security' concerns, his family said he was likely to buried in Ramadi, a Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad.
Saddam's daughters watched his final moments on TV in Dubai. 'They felt very proud as they saw their father facing his executioners so bravely, standing up,' said Rasha Oudeh, who was with the daughters, Raghad and Rana.
The execution was celebrated by Iraqi Shias, who turned out in their thousands in the holy city of Najaf as well as in Baghdad. One of the men whose testimony led to Saddam's conviction and execution said he was invited to view the body at the Prime Minister's office.
'When I saw the body in the coffin I cried,' said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost more than two-dozen family members in the reprisal killings that followed the botched 1982 assassination attempt in al-Dujail. 'I remembered my three brothers and my father who he had killed. I approached the body and told him: "This is the well-deserved punishment for every tyrant",' he said.
Iran, in a rare moment of accord with the Bush administration, welcomed the execution, having fought an eight-year war with Saddam's Iraq that claimed the lives of 1.7 million people. 'With the execution of Saddam, the life dossier of one of the world's most criminal dictators was closed,' began the report of his death on Iran's state-run TV. Some members of the Iraqi exile community in Britain said they had stayed up through the night watching the news in anticipation of Saddam's execution and had cried when the news was finally confirmed. 'We have been waiting for this for 25 years,' said Zara Mohammed, a Kurd whose four brothers were among 150 of her family members seized by Saddam's regime. Her only regret, she said, was that the hanging itself had not been shown on Iraqi TV. 'I want to see this moment, like very woman, every mother, every sister,' she said.
Near Detroit, Michigan, home to a large Iraqi-American community, the news of the hanging brought hundreds of people on to the streets, where they sounded their car horns, and sang and danced in celebration outside a mosque. 'This is the first time I've seen my dad this happy,' 13-year-old Ali al-Najjar said, with tears in his eyes and a wide grin. 'I've been praying for this all my life.'
In predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq, the reaction was starkly different. A curfew was imposed in Tikrit, and there were reports of sporadic clashes there. Residents in Awja, the village where Saddam was born, said he was a 'martyr' in the fight against the US-backed government. 'This is a mercenary court. Iraqi people reject this court. Saddam is the legal president of Iraq,' one young man said, apparently sceptical as to whether Saddam had been hanged. 'If they execute him we will rise up.' There were also expressions of anger in the Arab world about the timing of the execution. Saudi Arabia, in which the Muslim holy city of Mecca is located, was particularly critical. A presenter on the official al-Ikhbariya television station broke into scheduled programming to declare: 'There is a feeling of surprise and disapproval that the verdict has been applied during the holy months and the first days of Eid al-Adha. Leaders of Islamic countries should show respect for this blessed occasion ... not demean it.'
Russia's President Vladimir Putin, an opponent of the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam, voiced regret that international concerns about the execution had been ignored. 'The political consequences of this step should have been taken into account,' a foreign ministry spokesman said in Moscow.
France 'noted' the execution and urged 'all Iraqis to look towards the future and work towards reconciliation and national unity'. The Vatican said any use of capital punishment was 'tragic, a reason for sadness, even if it deals with a person who was guilty of grave crimes'.
But the strongest criticism came from human rights groups, including Amnesty International, which said that while it welcomed the attempt to hold Saddam responsible for crimes, his trial had not been fair.
'The execution appeared a foregone conclusion once the original verdict was pronounced, with the appeals court providing little more than a veneer of legitimacy for what was, in fact, a fundamentally flawed process,' the group said in a statement.
How the end came
Friday 29 December
11.44am [all times are Iraqi]: Officials are reported to have asked for Saddam's belongings to be collected from the US military prison where he is held.
3.21pm: Najib Nuaimi, a Saddam defence lawyer, says he believes the execution will take place on Saturday.
5.54pm: Iraqi officials dismiss claims Saddam will be hanged this weekend.
10.31pm: Munir Haddad, a judge authorised to attend the execution, says it will take place no later than Saturday.
Saturday 30 December
1.46am: The Associated Press reports that official witnesses are gathering in Baghdad's green zone for Saddam's execution.
5.45am approx: Saddam is led to the gallows and a noose is lowered over his neck. He repeats an Islamic statement of faith. A trapdoor is released and Saddam is hanged.
7.56am: US President George Bush describes Saddam's execution as 'the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime'.
2.22pm: A spokeswoman for Saddam's daughters, Raghad and Rana, says: 'They felt very proud as they saw their father facing his executioners so bravely, standing up.'
4.02pm: An aide to Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki tells Reuters: 'The body of Saddam Hussein will most probably be buried in a secret place in Iraq.'
6.07pm: Saddam's Baath Party exhorts Iraqis to 'strike without mercy' at the US occupiers and Iran to avenge the execution but warns them not to be drawn into civil war.
6.31pm: Saudi Arabia criticises Iraq's leaders for executing Saddam during the Islamic religious festival of Eid.
10.12pm: Defence lawyer Bushra al-Khalil claims Saddam's body was flown to his home town of Tikrit.
12.28am: Saddam's family insist he will be buried in Ramadi.
David Smith
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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'He is already history'
In this remarkable dispatch, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, one of the few journalists who can still move freely about Baghdad, watches the execution with Sunni insurgents
Sunday December 31, 2006
The Observer
In a small, bare living room in Baghdad, two Sunni mujahideens, Abu A'isha and his friend Abu Hamza, sat mesmerised. The Shia-controlled state TV was showing the final moments of the life of their former leader, the noose being tightened around his neck. Saddam was dressed in a black coat, his black dyed hair pushed to the back, his hand and legs shackled. Men in civilian clothes and ski masks helped him up a small ladder. A trap door surrounded by a metal rail could be seen.
Saddam appeared a little confused and exchanged a few words with his masked hangman, who gestured at his neck. Saddam nodded and the hangman wrapped a black piece of cloth around his neck.
'They killed him, is that possible?' Abu Hamza, a muscled Sunni insurgent in his early thirties asked in disbelief. 'I still can't believe it,' he continued, resting his head on his palm. The TV channel repeated the scenes many times, cut before the actual execution moment and followed by television scenes of jubilant Shia men and boys dancing, accompanied by patriotic songs. 'Those Shia, they killed him on the day of the Eid just to humiliate us,' said Abu Hamza.
Abu A'isha, a mid-level commander of an insurgency group in west Baghdad, short, stout, in his forties and dressed in a blue tracksuit, was more calm. 'It's better for the jihad,' he explained. 'Every time the mujahideen do an operation they say it's the people of Saddam. Where is Saddam now? Let's see if his death will affect the jihad. Of course it won't.' He added: 'The resistance is led by the Islamists, and we don't love Saddam. It's good that he is out of the picture. Now things will be clearer.
'There will be some hardcore Baathists who might demonstrate in the streets, go do a couple of attacks on the Americans, but it's over for them,' said Abu Hamza. This is the final declaration of the civil war, if anyone had any doubts left,' added Abu A'isha. 'I am sure there will be demonstrations in Adhamiya [the largely Sunni neighbourhood where Saddam was seen before the fall of Baghdad in 2003].'
But the streets in Sunni neighbourhoods, like most of Baghdad, yesterday remained calm and half deserted. A few cars drove quickly through the Sunni neighbourhoods of Seliekh and Adhamiya in north Baghdad. The city had an air of anxiety and anticipation.
'People are anxious. Saddam has been dead for a long time now. He is a page that was flipped four years ago. People are more worried about civil war,' said Hameed, a Sunni former officer. 'They are more worried about storing food and kerosene in case of a curfew than worrying about Saddam.'
In the Shia areas it was a different story. There was sporadic gunfire in the sky of Baghdad at dawn as the news of the execution was announced and more celebratory gun fire crackled in the afternoon when images from his execution were broadcast. In the vast, impoverished Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City, scores of militiamen and kids toted guns in the air, while others danced in the street, waving pictures of Shia clerics. From a pick-up truck, an effigy of the dictator hung from a stick as men slapped it with the soles of their flip-flops -a sign of contempt. Shia TV channels close to the Dawa party showed grainy images of the corpse of Saddam, his neck twisted at an odd angle, traces of blood on his cheek. But images that were intended to prove to the Iraqi people that their former dictator was executed were not enough for a population immersed in conspiracy theory.
'I know that when a man is hanged they dress him in an orange jumpsuit. Saddam was wearing his coat. Why? Because the Americans took him somewhere else,' said Ali, a Shia student from Karadda. Umm Hussein, a 40-year-old Shia woman who lost her house and her cousin after a multiple car bomb that also left her husband crippled for life, was more ambivalent.
'Of course we are happy. What did we get from him? He destroyed Iraq and sent us to war and then we starved. He didn't give us anything. and we lived in poverty.' Her husband sat nearby as her children played football outside their small cinder-block house. She looked at him. 'But will Saddam's execution bring health back to my husband? No.'
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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أسقف كانتربري يشن أعنف هجوم له حتى الآن على حرب العراق
لندن ـ رويترز : وجه أسقف كانتربري امس أشد انتقادته حتى الان، للغزو الذي قادته الولايات المتحدة على العراق، واستمرار سفك الدماء هناك، قائلا ان أوجه القصور في هذه الخطط تتضح أكثر فأكثر.
وقال الزعيم الروحي لنحو 70 مليون أنجليكاني، لراديو هيئة الاذاعة البريطانية، «قلت قبل بداية الحرب ان لدي تحفظات شديدة بشأن مدى أخلاقيتها». وذكر أنه كان مستعدا تماما للاعتقاد بأن قرارات خوض الحرب اتخذت بحسن نية. لكنه أضاف «أعتقد أن هذه القرارات معيبة وأعتقد أن العيوب الاخلاقية والمهنية ظهرت مع مرور الوقت. لقد عرضوا قواتنا أكثر فأكثر للخطر، بطرق أجدها باعثة على الانزعاج الشديد».
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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الاتحاد الأوروبي يعارض إعدام صدام .. والأمم المتحدة تدعو إلى «ضبط النفس»
زعيم اليمين الفرنسي المتطرف لوبن يعتبر تنفيذ العقوبة «جريمة حقيقية»
لندن : «الشرق الأوسط»
اكدت الرئاسة الفنلندية للاتحاد الاوروبي امس معارضتها لإعدام صدام حسين. وقال وزير الخارجية اركي توميويا خلال مؤتمر صحافي في هلسنكي ان «الاتحاد الاوروبي يرفض عقوبة الاعدام التي يجب الا تطبق في هذه الحالة ايضا».
من جهتها، دعت لوي اربور المفوضة السامية للأمم المتحدة لحقوق الانسان السلطات العراقية الى التحلي بضبط النفس في تنفيذ الحكم على صدام حسين قائلة انه توجد شكوك بشأن عدالة المحاكمة الاصلية. وقالت اربور في بيان اول من امس «حكم الاستئناف قرار معقد ومطول يتطلب دراسة متأنية». وحسب وكالة رويترز، اضافت قولها «هناك عدد من اسباب القلق بشان عدالة المحاكمة الاصلية ويجب التأكد من معالجة هذه الامور معالجة شاملة. ولذلك فانني ادعو السلطات العراقية ألا تتعجل في السعي لتنفيذ الحكم في هذه الحالات». وقالت ان العراق والمجتمع الدولي له مصلحة في التأكد من ان حكم الاعدام لا ينفذ الا بعد محاكمة واستئناف يعتبران جديرين بالثقة ونزيهين. واضافت «ينطبق هذا على وجه الخصوص في قضية غير عادية مثل هذه» وانه بموجب الاتفاقيات الدولية التي وقعها العراق فان لصدام الحق في ان يناشد «السلطات المعنية» لتخفيف الحكم او العفو عنه.
وفي باريس اعتبر زعيم اليمين الفرنسي المتطرف جان ماري لوبن قرار اعدام صدام «جريمة حقيقية». وجاء في مدونة رئيس الجبهة الوطنية على شبكة الانترنت امس «الرئيس العراقي صدام حسين ليس مجرما او لص مصرف او سارق دجاج: انه رئيس دولة اطاح به تدخل جيش اجنبي». ونسبت اليه وكالة الصحافة الفرنسية قوله «ان محاكمته امام محكمة استثنائية وادانته تهدفان بلا شك الى تصفية رئيس الدولة الذي تعامل معه الغرب لسنوات».
وسخر لوبن من الرئيس الفرنسي جاك شيراك مطلقا عليه اسم «جاك ش ـ ايراك (عراق بالفرنسية)» لقيامه «ببيع هذا البلد سلاحا بقيمة 120 او 130 مليارا». وتابع «ان ادانته (صدام) على حادث من دون شك مؤسف نظرا لمقتل 120 شخصا فيه عوضا عن محاكمة الافعال الاساسية لحكومته، يبرهن على اننا بصدد مؤامرة سياسية دنيئة وبالتالي جريمة حقيقية».
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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سيناتور أميركي بارز : صدام مات سياسيا وغيابه جسديا لن يؤثر على وضع العراق
واشنطن: منير الماوري
استبعد عضو بارز في مجلس الشيوخ الأميركي أن يكون لإعدام الرئيس العراقي المخلوع صدام حسين تأثير على مسار الأحداث في العراق، باعتبار أن صدام انتهى سياسيا ولم يعد له أي تأثير على الحياة السياسية العراقية . وأوضح السيناتور الديمقراطي جاك ريد في تعليق له عن الإعدام الوشيك لصدام حسين «ربما يكون هناك احتجاجات على إعدامه، وأعتقد أن هناك من سيحاول أن يستغل الإعدام لخدمة أغراض سياسية خاصة به ضمن محاولات الهجوم على الحكومة العراقية والقوات الأميركية ولكني أعتقد أن صدام بشكل شخصي لم يعد له أي قيمة في الحياة السياسية العراقية، ولن يسبب إعدامه تأثيرا كبيرا. وتابع ريد في حديثه لمحطة فوكس نيوز الأميركية قائلا: «إن الوضع القائم حاليا في العراق بصدام أو بدون صدام يشكل خطورة كبيرة على الأميركيين ولن يضيف إعدام صدام بعدا إضافيا لما نواجهه هناك». وأعاد السيناتور الأميركي التذكير بالتوقعات الخاطئة عند إلقاء القبض على صدام حسين بأن اعتقاله سيخفف من أعمال العنف والتمرد ولكن اتضح أن لا علاقة له بما يجري من أحداث، كما لم يكن لظهوره ومحاكمته أي تأثير يذكر على سير الأحداث لا سلبا ولا إيجابا.
ورأى السيناتور ريد إن القرارات المصيرية التي يجب أن تتخذها الحكومة العراقية لا تتعلق بصدام وإنما بموضوع حل المليشيات المسلحة والبحث عن حلول سياسية لمشكلات البلاد. وطالب السيناتور ريد في هذا السياق الحكومة العراقية بتحجيم النفوذ الإيراني في العراق، منوها إلى أن هذا النفوذ لا يقتصر على العلاقة مع المليشيات المتطرفة وإنما وصل إلى الأحزاب السياسية المعتدلة. واستشهد ريد في كلامه باعتقال القوات الأميركية لدبلوماسيين إيرانيين، قائلا إن الاعتقال جرى في مقر تابع لحزب سياسي عراقي، كما دخل الدبلوماسيان الأراضي العراقية بدعوة من قادة سياسيين عراقيين.
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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From a Tikrit boy to butcher of Baghdad
Saddam's lonely childhood, bloody path to power and final, deadly miscalculation of his foreign enemies are charted by Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday December 31, 2006
The Observer
In Saddam's day it was done behind closed doors. The court hearing usually lasted barely a day. Then followed the secret bureaucracy of execution. First was the 'Red Card', the final formal order from a judge approving the death sentence. A number would then be recorded on a list against a name assigned to the victim. The number was often all that would appear on what would pass for a gravestone. Sometimes it would take years for the families to know the fate of their missing relatives.
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Saddam died under his own name in the full knowledge of the world, led to a gallows constructed for his execution, and killed in front of witnesses and an Iraqi government cameraman whose footage attested to his last moments.
At the end he saw neither his wife or daughters. His feared sons, Qusay and Uday, were already dead, killed by US troops before his own capture. Saddam met only his two half-brothers, Sabawai and Wataban, fellow captives at the detention centre Camp Cropper, Baghdad. And finally he was alone, as are all condemned men, bringing to an end a tale worthy of Marlowe: full of visceral ambition, bloody ruthlessness and self-delusion. To a life lived in violent and unsettled times.
And at the end what can we say about Saddam? That he was a monster? A madman? A malignant narcissist? All of these labels - and more - have been applied. In the run-up to the second Gulf War, the author and columnist Thomas Friedman framed the paradox of Saddam in a different and more subtle way, asking whether Iraq was the way it was because of Saddam? Or was Saddam the way he was because of Iraq? In reality there are no monsters, only men. And it was as a man Saddam went to the gallows, not as a cypher. Those who called him a 'madman' - as so many did - were lazy. He was too complex and contradictory a figure for that, as those who tried to profile him discovered. But if there are identifiable hallmarks of narcissistic personality disorder, then Saddam had them times over.
There was the almost pathological lack of openness and trust. There was the grandiosity as he compared himself with historical figures such as Saladin, King Nebuchadnezzar II - both of whom captured Jerusalem - and even the Prophet Muhammad. There was also his marked lack of empathy and the insistence that others admire his solitary stoicism. Most of all there was the insistence that Saddam - the Great Uncle - was always at the very centre of Iraq's story.
And if, as some psychologists who have studied his character have argued, Saddam represents 'malignant narcissism', then it is in keeping with the idea that such personalities are largely forged out of early childhood deprivation. For Saddam's childhood was one of multiple emotional removals.
Born in the house of his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, on 28 April, 1937 near Tikrit, Saddam was the son of a landless and impoverished peasant, who died shortly before his birth. His mother Sabha, doubly impoverished by the death of her husband, left her infant to be raised by the family of Khairallah.
Another separation was not far off. Within four years - in 1941 - his uncle, an army officer and fervent Arab nationalist, would participate in the doomed uprising against the landing of British troops in Iraq and find himself jailed for five years.
The young Saddam found himself with his mother who then married a relative of his father. According to biographies of Saddam, the only interest his new stepfather had in the boy was to violently humiliate him.
Saddam grew up a lonely child, bullied at home and unable to read and write until he was 10. It was only then that he was finally reunited with Khairallah, now out of prison. Saddam's relationship with Khairallah - later to be a hugely corrupt mayor of Baghdad whom Saddam would be forced to remove - was crucial to his development as an Arab nationalist. He hated the British and their allies in Iraq's monarchy for taking his uncle away from him for five long years, and by the time he left school, aged 18, and travelled to Baghdad to continue his studies, he was moving rapidly towards the pan-Arab ideals of the Baath Party founded by Michel Aflaq.
With its emphasis on modernising Arab society, on socialism and its rejection of colonial interference in Arab affairs the party was rapidly gaining popularity among young Iraqis, who by 1956 were increasingly angry at what they saw as the Iraqi monarchy's weakness in the Suez crisis when they did not support Gamal Abdel Nasser. Aged 20, Saddam joined the Baath Party.
The Iraq of 1957 - the year Saddam joined the Baathis - was riven with deep political instability. The Hashemite monarchy, established under British tutelage in 1921 with King Faisal I, as Faisal himself was painfully aware, was a weak institution in the midst of a heavily armed population split by sectarian and tribal differences. What real power there was lay with handful of former Ottoman officers who had fought on the British side in the First World War, and who now slipped in and out of high office, one of them serving as prime minister some 14 times.
It promised nothing good. And when King Faisal II and his family were machine-gunned trying to flee the palace by the troops of Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qassem in July 1958, it would usher in a decade of coups and violence that would serve as the background to the young Saddam's apprenticeship in the brutal business of Iraqi politics. They were events that would mesh the nature of the man with the nature of his country.
Because of the childhood experiences of Saddam, biographers Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi have argued, he was emotionally well-suited to the vicious politics of that era. The few close ties he had in childhood, they suggest, had taught him the necessity to 'scheme and manipulate to survive'.
At first an organiser and feared rent-a-thug for the Baath Party, Saddam's rise matched his enthusiasm. Within two years of joining the Baathis he was asked to join an attempt to assassinate the leader of the 'Free Officers' who had liquidated the monarchy - Qassem - who had fallen out with the Baathis over the issue of union with neighbouring Arab countries. On 7 October 1959, Saddam and his group ambushed Qassem's car.
Qassem survived to order a violent clampdown on the Baathis, but in an instant the previously unknown Saddam Hussein became one of the country's most notorious and wanted figures. How Saddam would describe that event later in his life would be emblematic of his self-perception and the image that he would try to portray.
In the idealised version presented in Baathist literature and film, Saddam is a would-be martyr injured in the attempt on Qassem's life, who then flees on his horse. In a series of dramatically embellished episodes, Saddam cuts out a bullet from his body with a knife. Finally the would-be killer swims the Tigris with a knife in his teeth to safety.
Not much of it was true. In reality Saddam was not the principal gunman but was supposed to give covering fire to his companions. When the moment came he fired too soon and brought disaster on their
. But in the cult of personality that Saddam attempted to build around him, it would become a defining personal myth, as well as central myth of the Baath Party he would slowly rise through and bend to his own ends.
Which poses a critical question about Saddam: where were the demarcation lines between his attempt to create his own national narrative to unite the deeply divided Iraq, between finding a functioning party propaganda that required its own fables, and the delusions that he actually believed about himself?
For later in life, as Iraq's totalitarian leader, Saddam would look to hugely symbolic historical figures on which to model himself. In particular, he would present himself to Iraqis as the 'successor' to Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin. Psychologist Erwin Parson has called the latter Saddam Hussein's 'Nebuchadnezzar Imperial Complex' - it saw him photographed in a recreation of Nebuchadnezzar's war chariot among many other self-comparisons.
What is true is that Saddam's sense of his place in history - at least that available to scrutiny - underwent a marked change when he finally seized total power in 1979 after forcing out his predecessor, President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. By then Saddam had been running the show behind the scenes for years.
But if 1979 marked the first intimations of the self-obsessive Saddam Hussein who would so vigorously mythologise his place in history - the Saddam who would embark on the vast architectural projects, the palaces, the recreation of Babylon and the vast mosques - there was another side to his personality.
This was the ruthless and calculating Saddam, who had killed his first man in Tikrit in the squabbles between the nationalists and communists in his early twenties - the man who would engineer his emergence behind the scenes as the 'strong man of Baghdad'.
This was the Saddam who had studied Stalin's quietly forceful ascent, rising before dawn most days and working his way through the Baath Party rivalries and purges to gather all the key offices of state to himself: head of the Revolutionary Command Council, Prime Minister, commander in chief of the armed forces, before grabbing the presidency.
For all the grandiosity that he would later display, here was a man who was politically skilful in the lethal arena of Iraqi politics: tenacious, capable of great charm, calculating, often pragmatic and deeply ambitious. And by 1968, at the age of just 31, after a period of exile following the attempted Qassem assassination, Saddam was back and had manoeuvred himself into a position of such influence within the Baath Party that he played a key role in engineering the coup d'etat that would bring the party more than three decades in power and provide him with his own route to absolute rule.
Former associates of Saddam from his hometown of Tikrit have described his way of ruling. It was, they say, the way his clan ran the town, and later the party. But after 1979 the Tikritis - and Saddam foremost among them - were running a country. And while the Baath ideology that Saddam had embraced talked about a revolutionary process which would modernise Arab society, in reality its most visible figurehead, Saddam, would behave like an insular and extremely brutal provincial tribal leader.
Iraq's ever restless Kurds, the country's Shia majority and his political rivals, would all learn to fear a ruthlessness informed by a worldview that would have been paranoid if it had not contained an element of reality. He expressed it to a guest shortly after seizing the presidency in 1979: 'I know there are scores of people plotting to kill me and this is not difficult to understand. After all, did we not sieze power by plotting against our predecessors? However I am far cleverer than they are. I know they are conspiring to kill me long before they actually start planning to do it. This enables me to get them before they have the faintest chance of striking me.'
Saddam did move to modernise some parts of Iraqi society - with his emphasis on education of the young as a national priority and his introduction of a new code giving more equal rights. But in terms of leadership, his efforts at modernity were focused entirely on how to control. So Saddam studied the rise of the National Socialism and how Mao and Stalin had both redefined socialism to bolster them in power.
One of the earliest attempts to understand Saddam's psychology - rather than regarding him as a useful client - came in an unusually perceptive presentation to the US House Armed Services Committee in 1990 ahead of the first Gulf War by Dr Jerrold Post, Professor of Psychiatry, Political Psychology and International Affairs at George Washington University. It vigorously rejected the idea of Saddam as a 'madman'.
Instead, Post ventured: 'While psychologically in touch with reality, [Saddam] is often politically out of touch with reality.' He added that he also regarded his worldview as 'narrow and distorted'. Saddam's reputation for brutality, Post argued, had 'deprived [Saddam] of the check of wise counsel from his leadership circle. This combination of limited international perspective and a sycophantic leadership circle leads him to miscalculate'. Crucially, he judged that the 'destiny of Saddam and Iraq are one and indistinguishable... His exalted self concept is fused with his Baathist political ideology. Baathist dreams will be realised when the Arab nation is unified under one strong leader. In Saddam's mind, he is destined for that role.'
It would be the distortions in Saddam's worldview - not the enemies he feared within - that would lead to his downfall.
Even before he seized the presidency Saddam was making clumsy errors on an international stage he barely understood. The first ally that Iraq sought as Saddam was rising to power, not unsurprisingly, was the Soviet Union, with whom Iraq signed a military aid pact in 1972. But the executions in 1978 of hundreds of Iraqi communists strained that relationship, forcing him to look to the US and France.
A year later Saddam would be confronted by a far more fundamental crisis - the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini whom Saddam had agreed with the Shah to expel from his exile in Iraq in 1978.
Khomeini and Saddam were bitter enemies not least over Saddam's fears over the growing Iranian influence over Shias in the region. And as the Islamic revolution proceeded in Iran, border clashes broke out over the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway.
While Saddam, a Sunni, argued that there was no interest in a war between the two states, the reality was that he planned to try to occupy a large tranche of Iran. The war that inevitably followed saw the estimated death of 1.7 million people. But despite the stalemate and attrition over the Iran conflict, Saddam was not yet finished with his wars.
Rationalising that he had been fighting the Iranians on behalf of all of the Gulf states he attempted to insist that Kuwait forgive its share of Iraq's war debt. Kuwait refused. And it refused to Saddam's request to cut oil production to push up the price of oil. As tensions with Kuwait mounted Iraq sought to discover what the US - which had been funding Iraq for a decade - would do if Iraq annexed Kuwait. Mistaking a neutral answer for approval, Saddam seized his tiny oil-rich neighbour.
It was an act that would mark the collision between Saddam and the US that would ultimately be his undoing. It also brought him up against the Bush political dynasty, father and son, the latter of whom would turn US foreign policy on Iraq, the country it had supplied with the materials for Saddam's worst atrocity - the gassing of the Kurds at Halabja in 1988 - into something not far short of a vendetta.
While Saddam survived the first Gulf War despite a crushing military defeat in the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 - which he claimed typically as a victory - in 2003, confronted by the determination of the administration of Bush the younger to remove him at any cost, he was finally unseated.
But it would only be with his capture nine months later, a dishevelled figure found hiding in a squalid hole in the ground, and with the trial process that followed, that the world would finally see Saddam the man with all of his pretensions stripped bare. And in the end he was what all dictators are: petulant, threatening sometimes and at other times sulking. But he was other things. He could be confused and cowed and oddly vulnerable. Finally as he made that last walk there was a muted dignity. For above all, despite his terrible deeds, Saddam in his last moments was still only a man.
A dictator's life
28 April 1937: Born in al-Awja, 150 km (90 miles) north of Baghdad. Aged 10 he flees an abusive stepfather to live with his uncle.
1957: Joins the fledgling Iraqi Ba'ath Party. Takes part in unsuccessful attempt to kill the Prime Minister. Flees abroad to Egypt.
1968: Helps plot coup that puts the Ba'ath Party in power.
1979: Takes power after President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr steps aside. Executes dozens of rivals within days.
1980: Launches eight-year war on Iran.
1982: Survives assassination attempt by Dawa activists. Allegedly orders a campaign of reprisals, which sees 148 Shia Muslims killed.
February 1988: Start of campaign, allegedly ordered to depopulate northern areas which support Kurdish guerrillas.
16 March 1988: Iraqi forces launch chemical attack on Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja, killing approximately 5,000.
20 August 1988: Ceasefire in Iran-Iraq war. Campaign against Kurds continues.
2 August 1990: Launches invasion of Kuwait, prompting UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Iraq. Invasion forces ousted six months later by US-led troops.
20 March 2003: US launches war against Iraq with strikes on Baghdad.
7 April 2003: US forces take country. Saddam goes into hiding.
14 December 2003: Capture by US.
1 July 2004: First appears in court before the Iraqi High Tribunal.
19 October 2005: Goes on trial with seven co-defendants charged with crimes against humanity over the 1982 killings. Pleads not guilty.
2 August 2006: Second trial, on charges of war crimes against Iraqi Kurds. Refuses to plead.
5 November 2006: Sentenced to death.
30 December 2006: Saddam Hussein executed by hanging at 6am local time in Baghdad
Linda MacDonald
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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عملية الإعدام استغرقت 25 دقيقة ووفاته جاءت بعد 10 دقائق
شاهد عيان: صدام بدا هادئا حين إعدامه.. ونطق بالشهادتين.. وحذر من الإيرانيين
بغداد ـ لندن: «الشرق الأوسط»
اقتيد صدام حسين بالأغلال، وقد بدا عليه الهدوء الى قاعة في بغداد في ساعة مبكرة من صباح امس، ثم لف الحبل حول عنقه وجذب أحد الحراس ذراعا وضع نهاية لحياته ومرحلة طويلة من تاريخ العراق.
وشهد سامي العسكري، وهو سياسي شيعي بارز مقرب من رئيس الوزراء نوري المالكي، عملية الاعدام، وأبلغ رويترز بأنها استغرقت 25 دقيقة، غير ان وفاته كانت سريعة للغاية، ما ان انفتح باب في الارض تحت قدميه. وقال العسكري ان صدام «اقتيد الى الاعدام بعد ان تلي عليه الحكم من قبل احد القضاة، وسأله قاض آخر ما اذا كان لديه شيء يقوله او يوصي به». وقال ان أحد الحراس جذب ذراعا فسقط صدام نصف متر من خلال باب تحت قدميه وسمع صوت عنقه يدق على الفور، بل وشوهد بعض الدم على الحبل. وأضاف ان الرئيس السابق ترك معلقا في المشنقة نحو عشر دقائق قبل ان يؤكد طبيب وفاته، ثم رفع من المشنقة ووضع في كيس أبيض. وأكد مسؤول آخر حضر الإعدام إن صدام توفي على الفور.
وقال المسؤول «بدا هادئا للغاية ولم يرتجف»، مضيفا أن صدام، 69 عاما، نطق بالشهادتين قبل أن يموت. وقال العسكري إن صدام الذي أعدم لدوره في قتل 148 رجلا وصبيا من قرية الدجيل الشيعية بعد محاولة فاشلة لاغتياله عام 1982، أعدم في الساعة السادسة وعشر دقائق صباحا بتوقيت العراق، (3:10 بتوقيت غرينتش)، وفقا لساعة موجودة في قاعدة عسكرية عراقية بالكاظمية (مقر دائرة الاستخبارات العسكرية). من جهة اخرى، قال العسكري ان مقر الاستخبارات هذا اختير لإعدامه «ربما لكونه الموقع الذي كان ينفذ فيه حكم الاعدام بحق قيادات وكوادر مؤيدي الحركة الاسلامية، وخصوصا حزب الدعوة الذين كانوا يعذبون ويعدمون في هذا المكان».
وكانت القاعدة مقر المخابرات العسكرية في عهد صدام، حيث تعرض كثير من الضحايا للتعذيب وأعدموا باستخدام المشنقة نفسها. وقال العسكري إن صدام اقتيد الى القاعة الصغيرة على أيدي ستة حراس مقنعين، وكان مرتديا سترة وسروالا أسودين وحذاء أسود. وكان مقيد اليدين والرجلين. وأضاف انه بعد ان دخل صدام القاعة أجلسوه في مقعد وقرأ عليه احد القضاة الحكم، لكن عندما شاهد الكاميرا تدخل لتسجيل الحدث بدا يردد عبارات كالتي كان يرددها في المحكمة مثل «يحيى العراق» و«عاشت فلسطين»، وشعارات اخرى. وقال ان القيود الحديدية التي كانت تقيد يدي صدام من الامام عكس وضعها بحيث تقيد يديه خلف ظهره عندما اقتيد الى الاعدام. وقال العسكري ان زهاء 15 شخصا حضروا الإعدام من بينهم وزراء في الحكومة وأعضاء في البرلمان وأقارب للضحايا وممثلون للمحكمة ووزارة العدل. وأضاف انه لم يحضر الإعدام أي من رجال الدين، حيث لم يطلب صدام حضور أحدهم وانه لم تكن له طلبات اخيرة. وتابع ان الحضور ظلوا صامتين وهم يشاهدون، لكنهم تبادلوا التهاني بعد تأكيد موته.
من جانبه، روى موفق الربيعي عملية تنفيذ الاعدام قائلا إنها «تمت بحضور قضاة ومدعين عامين وطبيب وشهود». وأوضح أن «قوات التحالف جلبت صدام الى المنطقة وتسلمته القوات المسلحة العراقية وهو مقيد». وتابع ان صدام حسين «أدخل بعد ذلك الى غرفة ومعه القاضي ومدع عام وطبيب وشهود.. وتليت لائحة الإدانة عليه وهو مقيد اليدين وممسك بقرآن كريم. وبعدها اقتيد الى غرفة المشنقة». وتحدث الربيعي عن «بعض المشادات الكلامية قبل صعوده الى المشنقة لرفضه وضع كيس أسود على رأسه». ووصف الربيعي صدام حسين في تلك اللحظة بأنه «كان ضعيفا جدا بشكل لا يصور». وكان الربيعي والقاضي في محكمة التمييز في المحكمة الجنائية العليا منير حداد، الذي حضر إعدام الرئيس السابق، أكدا ان «صدام حسين وحده أعدم». وأوضح الربيعي من جهته أن «إعدام برزان وبندر أرجئ الى ما بعد عيد الأضحى»، مشيرا الى انه «أردنا إفراد هذا اليوم لإعدام صدام حسين قبل الدخول في أيام العطل الرسمية، وأجلت مسألة إعدام برزان التكريتي وعواد البندر الى ما بعد العيد». من جانبه، أكد جواد عبد العزيز الربيعي وهو شاهد إثبات في قضية الدجيل ضد صدام حسين ومعاونيه، لوكالة الصحافة الفرنسية «رأيت صدام حسين ميتا وعنقه مكسورة وملقى في سيارة إسعاف داخل المنطقة الخضراء». وأضاف «كان يرتدي بزة سوداء وقميصا أبيض وكان شعره طويلا بعض الشيء وذقنه طويلة ايضا». وأعرب الزبيدي الذي فقد والده واثنين من أشقائه؛ أعدموا من قبل نظام صدام، إثر تعرض موكبه الى هجوم في منطقة الدجيل (شمال بغداد)، ان «إعدام صدام يمثل فرحة لكل العراقيين وعيدا لكل الشهداء واليتامى والأرامل». كما أعلن القاضي منير حداد الذي شاهد تنفيذ إعدام صدام حسين لوكالة الصحافة الفرنسية، أن «صدام قال كلمة أخيرة»، مطالبا العراقيين «آمل أن تكونوا موحدين وأحذركم من الوثوق بالإيرانيين والمحتلين لأنهم خطرون». وأضاف أن صدام قال «أنا لا أخشى أحدا». وكانت المحكمة العراقية الجنائية العليا قد حكمت في الخامس من نوفمبر (تشرين الثاني) الماضي بالإعدام على الرئيس العراقي السابق صدام حسين بعد إدانته بقتل 148 قرويا شيعيا مطلع الثمانينات من القرن الماضي. وأكد الربيعي «أقول لكل العراقيين توحدوا وانسوا هذه الصفحة من تاريخ العراق لنعيش مع بعضنا»، معبرا عن أمله في ان «يكون هذا اليوم العظيم يوما للوحدة الوطنية ويوما لتحرر الشعب العراقي». وحول توثيق مشاهد إعدام صدام حسين، أوضح الربيعي أن «المشاهد صورت منذ تسلمه من قوات التحالف الى القوات العراقية وحتى اللحظة الحالية». وأضاف أن «مسألة عرضها متروكة للسياسيين لأن هذه مسألة حساسة ومهمة ولا نريد أن نثير بعض أبناء شعبنا». ورأى الربيعي أن مسألة إعدام صدام حسين «قضية إقامة العدل»، مشيرا الى «مئات الآلاف من اليتامى والأرامل في حلبجة والأنفال والحرب مع إيران وغزو الكويت». وأكد أن «أكبر رمز من رموز الطغيان ذهب الى غير رجعة وستفتح صفحة جديدة».
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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'I watched Saddam die'
Marie Colvin
THE knock on the door came just before 6am. Saddam Hussein’s executioners were disguised with black balaclavas.
He spent his last minutes yesterday in the sordid bowels of Iraqi military intelligence headquarters, once home to his own torturers and killers.
Just as the dawn call to prayer was beginning over the city, he was led, shambling in leg irons, to the scaffold to pay the price for his crimes against the Iraqi people.
“We took him to the gallows room and he looked like he wondered what was going on,” said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi government’s national security adviser, who saw him die. “He looked at the gallows not believing what was going to happen.”
As the world reacted with mixed jubilation and condemnation to the hanging, Rubaie revealed that the deposed dictator muttered as he was taken to his death: “Do not be afraid; it is where we all go.”
Rubaie was among the 15 people in the ill-lit room that was Saddam’s last sight on earth. The former Iraqi dictator showed no remorse, said Rubaie, speaking by telephone from Baghdad.
“He was respected throughout before and after the execution. We followed rigorously international and Islamic standards.”
After the dramas of Friday night, when Iraqi officials said Saddam’s death was imminent but his lawyers tried to stay his execution with an appeal to a United States court, his fate was set early yesterday.
Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, had signed the death warrant before going to celebrate his son’s wedding, and the presidential council had endorsed it.
The American jailers who had custody of Saddam were ordered to surrender him to the Iraqi government. They offered him tranquillisers but Saddam refused. “We received physical custody of Saddam Hussein around 5.30am from the coalition forces, and we took over and he became ours,” said Rubaie.
As US troops stood guard outside, Saddam was first led to a sparse and unheated holding room in the bowels of the headquarters of Iraqi military intelligence. It would not have been lost on him that his own security forces had tortured and killed many people in the same grim building. Saddam was left for about half an hour to contemplate his fate. Iraqi law provides that a condemned man be allowed a final cigarette and a meal before his execution.
“He was handcuffed and we took him and sat him down,” said Rubaie. “There was a judge, a deputy general, deputy minister of justice, deputy minister of interior, a couple of other ministers, myself and a doctor.” After formalities they took him through “a huge file” of documents detailing his trial for crimes against humanity.
“The judge took him through the conviction. He was silent until he saw a video camera, and then began shouting slogans such as ‘God is great’. He started his rhetoric: ‘Long live Islam, down with Persia’, down with this and that. He started shouting his head off.” Rubaie made a last gesture of mercy. “His handcuffs were a little bit tight, and hurt him, and I instructed the guards to loosen them.”
The formalities over, the four masked executioners stepped forward. Short, tubby and dressed in leather jackets, they looked more like Al-Qaeda killers in an amateur terrorist video than those responsible for carrying out the sentence of death on a former head of state. Even though Saddam had shrunk in stature since the days of his pomp, he towered over them.
He had dressed for death in clothes sewn by his personal Turkish tailor: black trousers, shined black shoes, a starched white shirt, black pullover and a black wool overcoat that protected him against the deep chill of his remaining minutes in the execution suite. His hair was dyed his signature black, but he had heavy bags under his eyes.
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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In sight of a new hemp noose hanging from the ceiling, the executioners removed his handcuffs to tie his hands behind his back. As he stood close to the trapdoor one wrapped a black scarf around his neck to shield it from rope burns.
When they went to put the black hood over his head, he mumbled: “That won’t be necessary.” The noose was slipped over his head.
He stood looking almost bewildered, and an executioner awkwardly tightened the hand-coiled knot of the noose on the left side of his neck.
Even on the brink of death Saddam had not forgotten the video camera. Just before he dropped through a trapdoor on a platform surrounded by red railing, he shouted the Muslim profession of faith, “God is great and Muhammad is his prophet” and “Palestine is Arab”.
“He was standing with the rope round his neck,” said Rubaie. “The executioner started reading verses from the Koran, ‘There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger’. He repeated it twice and [Saddam] went down in no time.” The hangman pulled a lever, and Saddam dropped silently about 3ft through a metal trapdoor. It was 6.10am. Rubaie said he died instantly. “It was so, so quick, totally painless and there was no movement after that.”
Sami al-Askari, who represented the prime minister at the hanging, said he “heard his neck snap”.
Saddam hung from the rope for about 10 minutes, watched by the audience of about 15 people who could see him dangling under the platform. A doctor checked that his heart had stopped, then one of the executioners untied him. There was blood on the rope. The executioners put him in a white body bag and took photographs as proof for diehard loyalists that Saddam was dead. Iraqi television broadcast a still photograph of the last image of the dictator, his neck at an unnatural angle, sticking out of the white shroud.
Munir Haddad, an Iraqi appeals court judge, also witnessed the execution. He said afterwards: “One of the guards present asked Saddam Hussein whether he was afraid of dying. Saddam said, ‘Why would I? I spent my whole life fighting the infidels and the intruders.’
“Another guard asked him, ‘Why did you destroy Iraq, and destroy us? You starved us, and you allowed the Americans to occupy us’. His reply was, ‘I destroyed the invaders and . . . I destroyed the enemies of Iraq, and I turned Iraq from poverty into wealth’.
“Saddam was normal and in full control. He said, ‘This is my end. I started my life as a fighter and as a political militant. So death does not frighten me’.
“He said, ‘We’re going to heaven, and our enemies will rot in hell’.
“When he was taken to the gallows, the guards tried to put a hood on his head, but he refused. Then he recited verses from the Koran. Some of the guards started to taunt him.”
The guards chanted the name of the Shi’ite firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. “Who is Moqtada?” — Saddam sneered.
“A cleric who was present asked Saddam to recite some spiritual words,” Haddad said. “Saddam did so, but with sarcasm. These were his last words, and then the cord tightened around his neck and he dropped to his death
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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صدام دعا في رسالته المناضلين إلى عدم الحقد "لأنه يعمي البصر والبصيرة" (الفرنسية-أرشيف)
فيما يلي رسالة الرئيس العراقي الراحل صدام حسين التي وجهها إلى شعبه وإلى العرب بعد تصديق الحكومة العراقية على إعدامه يوم 26 ديسمبر/كانون الأول.
وكشف عن الرسالة محاميه خليل الدليمي بعد ذلك بيومين وهذا نصها الحرفي نقلا عن القدس برس:
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
قل لن يصيبنا إلاّ ما كتب الله لنا
أيّها الشعب العراقي العظيم.. أيّها النشامى في قواتنا المسلحة المجاهدة.. أيّتها العراقيات الماجدات.. يا أبناء أمّتنا المجيدة.. أيّها الشجعان المؤمنون في المقاومة الباسلة.
كنتُ كما تعرفوني في الأيام السالفات، وأراد الله سبحانه أن أكون مرّة أخرى في ساح الجهاد والنضال على لون وروح ما كنا به قبل الثورة مع محنة أشد وأقسى.
أيّها الأحبّة إن هذا الحال القاسي الذي نحن جميعاً فيه وابتُليَ به العراق العظيم، درس جديد وبلوى جديدة ليعرف به الناس كلٌّ على وصف مسعاه فيصير له عنواناً أمامَ الله وأمامَ الناس في الحاضر وعندما يغدو الحال الذي نحن فيه تأريخاً مجيداً، وهو قبل غيره أساس ما يبنى النجاح عليه لمراحل تاريخية قادمة، والموقف فيه وليس غيره الأمين الأصيل حيثما يصحُّ، وغيره زائف حيثما كان نقيض.. وكل عمل ومسعى فيه وفي غيره، لا يضيّع المرء الله وسط ضميره وبين عيونه معيوب وزائف، وإنّ استقواء التافهين بالأجنبي على أبناء جلدتهم تافه وحقير مثل أهله، وليس يصح في نتيجة ما هو في بلادنا إلاّ الصحيح، "أمّا الزبَدُ فيذهبُ جُفاءً وأمّا ما ينفع الناس فيمكث في الأرض"، صدق الله العظيم.
أيها الشعب العظيم.. أيها الناس في أمتنا والإنسانية.. لقد عرف كثر منكم صاحب هذا الخطاب في الصدق والنزاهة ونظافة اليد والحرص على الشعب والحكمة والرؤية والعدالة والحزم في معالجة الأمور، والحرص على أموال الناس وأموال الدولة، وأن يعيش كل شيء في ضميره وعقله وأن يتوجّع قلبه ولا يهدأ له بال حتى يرفع من شأن الفقراء ويلبّي حاجة المعوزين وأن يتسع قلبه لكل شعبه وأمته وأن يكون مؤمناً أميناً.. من غير أن يفرّق بين أبناء شعبه إلاّ بصدق الجهد المبذول والكفاءة والوطنيّة.. وها أقول اليوم باسمكم ومن أجل عيونكم وعيون أمّتنا وعيون المنصفين أهل الحق حيث رفعت رايته.
أيّها العراقيّون.. يا شعبنا وأهلنا، وأهل كل شريف ماجد وماجدة في أمّتنا.. لقد عرفتم أخاكم وقائدكم مثلما يعرفه أهله، لم يحن هامته للعُتاة الظالمين، وبقي سيفاً وعلماً على ما يحب الخُلّص ويغيظ الظالمين.
أليس هكذا تريدون موقف أخيكم وابنكم وقائدكم..؟! بلى هكذا.. يجب أن يكون صدام حسين وعلى هكذا وصف ينبغي أن تكون مواقفه، ولو لم تكن مواقفه على هذا الوصف لا سمح الله، لرفضته نفسه وعلى هذا ينبغي أن تكون مواقف من يتولّى قيادتكم ومن يكون علماً في الأمّة، ومثلها بعد الله العزيز القدير.. ها أنا أقدّم نفسي فداءً فإذا أراد الرحمن هذا صعد بها إلى حيث يأمر سبحانه مع الصدّيقين والشهداء. وإن أجّلَ قراره على وفق ما يرى فهو الرحمن الرحيم وهو الذي أنشأنا ونحن إليه راجعون، فصبراً جميلاً وبه المستعان على القوم الظالمين.
أيّها الإخوة.. أيّها الشعب العظيم.. أدعوكم أن تحافظوا على المعاني التي جَعَلتكم تحملون الإيمان بجدارة وأن تكونوا القنديل المشعّ في الحضارة، وأن تكون أرضكم مهد أبي الأنبياء، إبراهيم الخليل وأنبياء آخرين، على المعاني التي جَعَلتكم تحملون معاني صفة العظمة بصورة موثقة ورسميّة، فداءً للوطن والشعب بل رهن كل حياته وحياة عائلته صغاراً وكباراً منذ خط البداية للأمّة والشعب العظيم الوفيّ الكريم واستمرّ عليها ولم ينثن.. ورغم كل الصعوبات والعواصف التي مرّت بنا وبالعراق قبل الثورة وبعد الثورة لم يشأ الله سبحانه أن يُميت صدام حسين، فإذا أرادها في هذه المرّة فهي زرعهُ.. وهو الذي أنشأها وحماها حتى الآن.. وبذلك يعزّ باستشهادها نفس مؤمنة، إذ ذهبت على هذا الدرب بنفس راضية مطمئنّة من هو أصغر عمراً من صدام حسين. فإن أرادها شهيدة فإننا نحمده ونشكره قبلاً وبعداً.. فصبراً جميلاً، وبه نستعين على القوم الظالمين.. في ظل عظمة الباري سبحانه ورعايته لكم.. ومنها أن تتذكروا أن الله يَسّر لكم ألوان خصوصيّاتكم لتكونوا فيها نموذجاً يحتذى بالمحبة والعفو والتسامح والتعايش الأخوي فيما بينكم.. والبناء الشامخ العظيم في ظل أتاحه الرحمن من قدرة وإمكانات، ولم يشأ أن يجعل سبحانه هذه الألوان عبثاً عليكم، وأرادها اختبارا لصقل النفوس فصار من هو من بين صفوفكم ومَن هو من حلف الأطلسي ومن هم الفرس الحاقدون بفعل حكامهم الذين ورثوا إرث كسرى بديلاً للشيطان، فوسوس في صدور مَن طاوعه على أبناء جلدته أو على جاره أو سدّل لأطماع وأحقاد الصهيونيّة أن تحرّك ممثلها في البيت الأبيض الأميركي ليرتكبوا العدوان ويخلقوا ضغائن ليست من الإنسانية والإيمان في شيء.. وعلى أساس معاني الإيمان والمحبّة والسلام الذي يعزّ ما هو عزيز وليس الضغينة بنيتم وأعليتم البناء من غير تناحر وضغينة وعلى هذا الأساس كنتم ترفلون بالعز والأمن في ألوانكم الزاهية في ظل راية الوطن في الماضي القريب، وبخاصة بعد ثورتكم الغرّاء ثورة السابع عشر الثلاثين من تمّوز المجيدة عام 1968، وانتصرتم، وأنتم تحملونها بلون العراق العظيم الواحد.. إخوة متحابّين، إن في خنادق القتال أو في سوح البناء.. وقد وجد أعداء بلدكم من غُزاة وفرس، أن وشائج وموجبات صفات وحدتكم تقف حائلا بينهم وبين أن يستعبدوكم.. فزرعوا ودقوا إسفينهم الكريه، القديم الجديد بينكم فاستجاب له الغرباء من حاملي الجنسيّة العراقيّة وقلوبهم هواء أو ملأها الحاقدون في إيران بحقد، وفي ظنهم خسئوا أن ينالوا منكم بالفرقة مع الأصلاء في شعبنا بما يضعف الهمّة ويوغر صدور أبناء الوطن الواحد على بعضهم بدل أن توغر صدورهم على أعدائه الحقيقيّين بما يستنفر الهمم باتجاه واحدٍ وإن تلوّنت بيارقها وتحت راية الله أكبر، الراية العظيمة للشعب والوطن..
أيّها الإخوة أيّها المجاهدون والمناضلون إلى هذا أدعوكم الآن وأدعوكم إلى عدم الحقد، ذلك لأن الحقد لا يترك فرصة لصاحبه لينصف ويعدل، ولأنه يعمي البصر والبصيرة، ويغلق منافذ التفكير فيبعد صاحبه عن التفكير المتوازن واختيار الأصح وتجنّب المنحرف ويسدّ أمامه رؤية المتغيرات في ذهن مَن يتصوّر عدوّاً، بما في ذلك الشخوص المنحرفة عندما تعود من انحرافها إلى الطريق الصحيح، طريق الشعب الأصيل والأمّة المجيدة.. وكذلك أدعوكم أيها الإخوة والأخوات يا أبنائي وأبناء العراق.. وأيها الرفاق المجاهدون.. أدعوكم أن لا تكرهوا شعوب الدول التي اعتدت علينا، وفرّقوا بين أهل القرار والشعوب، واكرهوا العمل فحسب، بل وحتى الذي يستحق عمله أن تحاربوه وتجالدوه لا تكرهوه كإنسان.. وشخوص فاعلي الشر، بل اكرهوا فعل الشر بذاته وادفعوا شرّه باستحقاقه.. ومن يرعوي ويُصلح إن في داخل العراق أو خارجه فاعفوا عنه، وافتحوا له صفحة جديدة في التعامل، لأن الله عفوٌ ويحب من يعفو عن اقتدار، وإن الحزم واجب حيثما اقتضاه الحال، وإنه لكي يُقبل من الشعب والأمّة ينبغي أن يكون على أساس القانون وأن يكون عادلاً ومنصفاً وليس عدوانيّاً على أساس ضغائن أو أطماع غير مشروعة.. واعلموا أيّها الإخوة أن بين شعوب الدول المعتدية أناسا يؤيدون نضالكم ضد الغزاة، وبعضهم قد تطوّع محاميّاً للدفاع عن المعتقلين ومنهم صدام حسين، وآخرين كشفوا فضائح الغزاة أو شجبوها، وبعضهم كان يبكي بحرقة وصدق نبيل، وهو يفارقنا عندما ينتهي واجبه.. إلى هذا أدعوكم شعباً واحداً أميناً ودوداً لنفسه وأمته والإنسانية.. صادقاً مع غيره ومع نفسه.
كادونا بباطلٍ ونكيدهُمُ بحقٍٍ ينتصر حقُنا ويخزى الباطلُ
لنا منازلُ لا تنطفي مواقدها ولأعدائنا النارُ تشوي منازلُ
وفي الأخرى تستقبلنا حورها يُعز منْ يقدمُ فيها لايُذالُ
عرفنا الدربَ ولقد سلكناها مناضلاً في العدل يتبعهُ مناضلُ
ما كنّا أبداً فيها تواليا في الصول والعزم نحنُ الأوائلُ
أيّها الشعب الوفيّْ الكريم: أستودعكم ونفسيَ عند الربّ الرحيم الذي لا تضيع عنده وديعة
ولا يخيبُ ظنّ مؤمنٍ صادقٍ أمين.. الله أكبر .. الله أكبر
وعاشت أمّتنا.. وعاشت الإنسانية بأمنٍ وسلام حيثما أنصفت وأعدلتْ..
الله أكبر وعاش شعبنا المجاهد العظيم.. عاش العراق.. عاش العراق.. وعاشت فلسطين وعاش الجهاد والمجاهدون..
الله أكبر.. وليخسأ الخاسؤون.
صدّام حسين
رئيس الجمهوريّة والقائد العام للقوّات المسلحة المجاهدة.
المصدر: الجزيرة
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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Family clues to Iraq's missing oil billions
The dictator is dead, and now the hunt for his illicit fortune is intensifying. Officials from the FBI and US Treasury are focusing their inquiries on £2.2bn of illegal oil profits
Jason Burke
Sunday December 31, 2006
The Observer
American and Iraqi government investigators tracing hundreds of millions of pounds missing from Saddam Hussein's illicit fortune are hoping to question members of the former dictator's close family.
Officials from the FBI, the American Treasury and the State Department particularly want to find £2.2bn in illegal profits that Saddam's regime is alleged to have earned from 2000-2003 from an oil-for-trade pact signed with Syria that was outside the official United Nations administered oil-for-food programme, according to official documents released to a US congressional sub-committee.
State Department and Treasury officials claim that Syria has failed to account properly for more than $500m in Iraqi oil profits. The cash, deposited in Syria's central bank, was paid to Syrian 'businessmen' after Saddam's fall, sources say. Syrian officials deny the allegations, saying that visits by American officials to Damascus in the autumn of 2003 failed to uncover any evidence of the missing cash apart from $300m that has already been frozen.
The United Nations imposed economic sanctions, including a ban on oil sales, on Iraq in 1990 after Saddam invaded Kuwait. The oil-for-food program was launched in December 1996 to ease the impact of the sanctions on ordinary Iraqis.
The programme, supervised by the 15-nation UN Security Council, authorised the government to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy civilian goods.
In a report submitted to the CIA last year Charles Duelfer, a former UN arms inspectors, estimated that Saddam had amassed $10.9bn 'through illicit means' between 1990, when sanctions were imposed, and 2003. The dictator is also believed to have hidden cash in accounts in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and other countries and to have invested in precious stones, possibly diamonds purchased in the Far East.
Immediately before the war of 2003, $1.7bn in assets in accounts held in the US in the name of the government of Iraq, the central bank of Iraq, the state organisation for marketing oil, the Rafidain bank and the Rasheed bank was seized. The Bank of England froze £400m in British banks. An additional $495m of previously unknown assets were secured in accounts in Lebanon.
In the immediate aftermath of his capture Saddam was said to have given his US interrogators information on the whereabouts of the billions he siphoned from Iraq's coffers and salted away abroad. Iyad Allawi, then a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said that the Iraqis were searching for £23bn 'deposited in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and other countries under the names of fictitious companies'.
Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother captured in April 2003, has been a key source for financial investigators in America and Iraq, who now believe that close family members might hold the key. Barzan began managing Saddam's overseas portfolio after moving to Geneva in 1983, where he served as Iraq's ambassador to Switzerland. Raghad, Saddam's daughter, lives freely in Amman under the condition that she does not engage in political activities or make public statements. King Abdullah of Jordan granted her and her sister, Rana, asylum on humanitarian grounds after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
Raghad, known as 'Little Saddam' because she shares her father's temper, has been accused by the new Iraqi government of using millions allegedly stolen by Saddam to help finance the insurgency. However it is unclear if Raghdad or Rana have much sympathy for their father, though the latter was involved in his legal defence. Saddam ordered the husbands of both women killed in 1996 after accusing them of giving information about Iraq's weapons to the West. The brothers had defected to Jordan with their families in 1995 and were killed when they accepted Saddam's offer to return.
Saddam's first wife and cousin, Sajida Khairallah Tulfah, who was also listed as wanted by the Iraqi government, is thought to be living in Qatar. Saddam's own defence lawyer said earlier this year that Sajida was 'an ill old lady' who enjoyed ' the patronage and hospitality of the emir'.
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Re: Saddam Hussein executed (Re: Mustafa Mahmoud)
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How Saddam died on the gallows
· Leaked film reveals chaotic end
· Taunts and insults hurled
· Sectarian backlash fear
Ewen MacAskill and Michael Howard
Monday January 1, 2007
The Guardian
Saddam Hussein hanging from a noose after execution in Baghdad early on Saturday, in a photograph seemingly taken by camera phone and obtained from an Arab-language website
Saddam Hussein hanging from a noose after execution in Baghdad early on Saturday, in a photograph seemingly taken by camera phone and obtained from an Arab-language website. Photograph: AP
Camera footage of the final minutes of Saddam Hussein released yesterday shows him being taunted by Shia hangmen and witnesses, a scene that risks increasing sectarian tension in Iraq.
As he stood at the gallows, he was tormented by the hooded executioners or witnesses shouting at him to "Go to hell" and chanting the name "Moqtada", the radical Shia Muslim cleric and leader of the Mahdi army militia, Moqtada al-Sadr, and his family.
The grainy images, which appeared to have been taken on a mobile phone, disclose exchanges between Saddam and his tormentors, the moment when his body drops through the trapdoor, and his body swinging, eyes partly open and neck bent out of shape. In what Sunni Muslims will perceive as a further insult, the executioners released the trapdoor while the former dictator was in the middle of his prayers.
Sunni Muslims, who were dominant under Saddam, but are now the victims of sectarian death squads, will see the shambolic nature of the execution as further evidence of the bias of the Shia-led government. They have repeatedly claimed that the Iraqi government, helped by the US and British, conducted a show trial, based on revenge rather than justice.
Saddam's team of defence lawyers claimed that the hanging had been simply "victors' justice".
The unruly scenes will also dismay the US and British governments, that are also privately alarmed at the sectarian bias of the government, led by the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. The US and Britain believe at least some members of the Iraqi government are complicit in sectarian killings, particularly by members of the police force.
The Iraqi government last night denied the execution had been sectarian or designed for revenge. Hiwa Osman, an adviser to the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, told the BBC: "This whole execution is about justice."
As Saddam was buried in this home village, Awja, outside Tikrit, yesterday morning, the leaked footage appeared on the internet and on Arabic television stations. While Saddam was professing Muhammad as God's prophet, he was interrupted by shouts. One of the people observing the execution chants "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada". Saddam dismissively repeats the name Moqtada. The noose around his neck, he appears to smile and shoots back: "Do you consider this bravery?"
Another voice shouts at him to "Go to hell". Saddam, seemingly accusing his enemies of destroying the country he once led, replies: "The hell that is Iraq?"
A Shia shouts "Long live Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr," a member of Moqtada's family thought to have been assassinated by Saddam's security services. Another onlooker pleads for dignity: "Please don't, the man is facing execution. Please don't. I beg you, no!"
As Saddam continues with his prayers, saying "I profess that there is no God but God and that Muhammad ...", the executioners release the trapdoor. There is a shout: "The tyrant has fallen."
Although many Sunni Muslims also suffered under him and were glad to see him go, the manner in which the execution was carried out will have created some sympathy for Saddam. The fact that the execution took place at the start of the main Muslim religious holiday will further inflame Sunni opinion.
The tit-for-tat killings between the majority Shias, who suffered badly under Saddam, and the previously dominant Sunnis, has created a de facto civil war that could break up the country. Sunni insurgents, particularly a branch of al-Qaida, have sought to fan the civil war by carrying out a series of devastating car bomb attacks on Shia population centres, particularly Sadr City in Baghdad and towns such as Hilla and Najaf.
The response among Sunnis to the hanging and the video was to swear revenge. A man from Mosul, a mixed city in the north, told Reuters: "The Persians have killed him. I can't believe it. By God, we will take revenge." He was referring to Iraq's new leaders' ties to Shia Iran, and the Shia in general.
Accusations that the government had mishandled the execution were not confined to Sunni regions. In the Kurdish region, there was also criticism. "This execution should have been for all of Saddam's victims, and instead they have hijacked it and turned it into a sectarian event," said Anwar Abdullah, a student at the technical institute of Sulaymaniyah.
Rebwar Suliman, 21, whose uncle and grandfather were killed by Saddam's secret police in Kurdistan in the 1980s, said: "It does a dishonour to the Kurds."
Saddam was buried in the dead of night, prompting an outpouring of grief and anger from fellow members of his tribe and other Sunni Arabs. His body was flown by US military helicopter to Tikrit and then taken to the village where he was born.
Hundreds of mourners visited his tomb inside a marble-floored hall built by Saddam. Others attended the Great Saddam Mosque in Tikrit.
The funeral came as it was reported that the US death toll in Iraq since the invasion had reached 3,000. The US military had disclosed yesterday that an American soldier had been killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Saturday, the 2,999th death since the invasion in 2003. But the website www.icasualties.org, yesterday also listed the death of Specialist Dustin Donica, 22, on December 28 as previously unreported, bringing the total to 3,000.
George Bush is expected to face renewed domestic political pressure following the latest milestone. Although the 3,000 figure is symbolically important for Americans, Iraqis suffer that rate of casualties on a monthly basis.
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Mustafa Mahmoud
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست