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Death penalty for Saddam Hussein

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Saddam Hussein has been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging.

The former Iraqi president was convicted by a Baghdad court for his role in the killing of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail in 1982.

His half brother Barzan al-Tikriti was also sentenced to death, as was Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar

Former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan got life in jail and three others received 15 year prison terms.

Another co-defendant, Baath party official Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki hailed the conviction in a televised address, saying that the sentence was "not a sentence on one man, but a sentence against all the dark period of his rule".

"Maybe this will help alleviate the pain of the widows and the orphans, and those who have been ordered to bury their loved ones in secrecy, and those who have been forced to supress their feelings and suffering, and those who have paid at the hands of torturers," Mr Maliki said. When called to court, Saddam Hussein, dressed in his usual dark suit and white shirt and carrying a Koran, walked to his customary seat and sat down.

Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman ordered Saddam Hussein to stand while he read out the verdict, but the former president defiantly refused to do so and had to be moved from his seat by court attendants.

As the judge began reading the death sentence Saddam Hussein shouted out "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest) and "Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!"

'Triumphant smile'

The former leader looked shocked and furious as the sentence was passed, and continued to shout, denouncing the court, the judge and the US-led occupation force in Iraq.

But the BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson said that after his tirade, which was clearly deliberate, as he was led away from the courtroom, Saddam Hussein seemed to have a small smile of triumph on his face. "It was as if he was thinking 'I've come here and done what I intended to do'," our correspondent said.

Shortly after the verdict was announced celebratory gunfire could be heard across Baghdad.

In the Shia district of Sadr City there was jubilation on the streets, with people driving around in cars, beeping their horns. There were also jubilant scenes in the holy city of Najaf.

The Baghdad celebrations were in defiance of a 12-hour daytime curfew banning all vehicle and pedestrian traffic which was placed on the whole city of six million people amid fears of violence from Saddam Hussein's Sunni Arab supporters.

The government cancelled all army leave and the city's civilian airport was closed.

Hometown anger

Immediately after the sentencing violence reportedly broke out in the mainly Sunni Azamiya district of Baghdad, with machine guns and mortars being fired. Three nearby provinces, including Salahuddin, which contains Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, are also under curfew.

Thousands of people also defied the curfew in Tikrit, but there it was to voice support for Saddam Hussein and to denounce the verdict.

Sunnis in Tikrit marched through the city, chanting "We will avenge you Saddam."

Almost three years since Saddam Hussein was captured, soaring sectarian violence has brought Iraq to the brink of civil war.

Few Iraqis think the trial verdict will ease conflict, the BBC's Andrew North in Baghdad says.

Even those Iraqis who want to see their former leader dead do not believe his execution would make things any better, our correspondent says.

Chance to appeal

Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants will be given the right to appeal, but that is expected to last a few weeks and to end in failure for the defendants. Many critics have dismissed the trial as a form of victors' justice, given the close attention the US has paid to it.

Before the session began former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was ejected from the courtroom after handing the judge a note in which he called the trial a "travesty".

Saddam Hussein's defence team have also accused the government of interfering in the proceedings - a complaint backed by US group Human Rights Watch.

And the former leader's lawyers have attacked the timing of the planned verdict, which comes days before the US votes in mid-term elections.

US President George W Bush's Republican Party is at risk of losing control of Congress in part because of voter dissatisfaction over its handling of the Iraq conflict.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6117910.stm

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45 comments

#31

zara Mon, 6 Nov 2006 - 16:31

saima786Sadaam hussein deserves the death penalty...............just saying it like it is! After what he's done.......do you think he should get a prison sentance?

yes i think he should get a prison sentence

#32

Omrow Mon, 6 Nov 2006 - 17:28

Robert Fisk says that the Iraqi Judge has hung Bush as well as Saddam.

Robert Fisk: This was a guilty verdict on America as well

The Independent
Published: 06 November 2006

So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day.

Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't be a more just verdict - nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison, Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death instead of the condemned man. But we can't mention Abu Ghraib these days because we have followed Saddam's trail of shame into the very same institution. And so by hanging this awful man, we hope - don't we? - to look better than him, to remind Iraqis that life is better now than it was under Saddam.

Only so ghastly is the hell-disaster that we have inflicted upon Iraq that we cannot even say that. Life is now worse. Or rather, death is now visited upon even more Iraqis than Saddam was able to inflict on his Shias and Kurds and - yes, in Fallujah of all places - his Sunnis, too. So we cannot even claim moral superiority. For if Saddam's immorality and wickedness are to be the yardstick against which all our iniquities are judged, what does that say about us? We only sexually abused prisoners and killed a few of them and murdered some suspects and carried out a few rapes and illegally invaded a country which cost Iraq a mere 600,000 lives ("more or less", as George Bush Jnr said when he claimed the figure to be only 30,000). Saddam was much worse. We can't be put on trial. We can't be hanged.

"Allahu Akbar," the awful man shouted - God is greater. No surprise there. He it was who insisted these words should be inscribed upon the Iraqi flag, the same flag which now hangs over the palace of the government that has condemned him after a trial at which the former Iraqi mass murderer was formally forbidden from describing his relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's Secretary of Defence. Remember that handshake? Nor, of course, was he permitted to talk about the support he received from George Bush Snr, the current US President's father. Little wonder, then, that Iraqi officials claimed last week the Americans had been urging them to sentence Saddam before the mid-term US elections.

Anyone who said the verdict was designed to help the Republicans, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, blurted out yesterday, must be "smoking rope". Well, Tony, that rather depends on what kind of rope it might be. Snow, after all, claimed yesterday that the Saddam verdict - not the trial itself, please note - was "scrupulous and fair". The judges will publish "everything they used to come to their verdict."

No doubt. Because here are a few of the things that Saddam was not allowed to comment upon: sales of chemicals to his Nazi-style regime so blatant - so appalling - that he has been sentenced to hang on a localised massacre of Shias rather than the wholesale gassing of Kurds over which George W Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara were so exercised when they decided to depose Saddam in 2003 - or was it in 2002? Or 2001? Some of Saddam's pesticides came from Germany (of course). But on 25 May 1994, the US Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs produced a report entitled "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences (sic) of the Persian Gulf War".

This was the 1991 war which prompted our liberation of Kuwait, and the report informed Congress about US government-approved shipments of biological agents sent by American companies to Iraq from 1985 or earlier. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax; Clostridium botulinum; Histoplasma capsulatum; Brucella melitensis; Clostridium perfringens and Escherichia coli. The same report stated that the US provided Saddam with "dual use" licensed materials which assisted in the development of chemical, biological and missile-system programmes, including chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings (provided as pesticide production facility plans).
Yes, well I can well see why Saddam wasn't permitted to talk about this. John Reid, the British Home Secretary, said that Saddam's hanging "was a sovereign decision by a sovereign nation". Thank heavens he didn't mention the £200,000 worth of thiodiglycol, one of two components of mustard gas we exported to Baghdad in 1988, and another £50,000 worth of the same vile substances the following year.

We also sent thionyl chloride to Iraq in 1988 at a price of only £26,000. Yes, I know these could be used to make ballpoint ink and fabric dyes. But this was the same country - Britain - that would, eight years later, prohibit the sale of diphtheria vaccine to Iraqi children on the grounds that it could be used for - you guessed it - "weapons of mass destruction".
Now in theory, I know, the Kurds have a chance for their own trial of Saddam, to hang him high for the thousands of Kurds gassed at Halabja. This would certainly keep him alive beyond the 30-day death sentence review period. But would the Americans and British dare touch a trial in which we would have not only to describe how Saddam got his filthy gas but why the CIA - in the immediate aftermath of the Iraqi war crimes against Halabja - told US diplomats in the Middle East to claim that the gas used on the Kurds was dropped by the Iranians rather than the Iraqis (Saddam still being at the time our favourite ally rather than our favourite war criminal). Just as we in the West were silent when Saddam massacred 180,000 Kurds during the great ethnic cleansing of 1987 and 1988.

And - dare we go so deep into this betrayal of the Iraqis we loved so much that we invaded their country? - then we would have to convict Saddam of murdering countless thousands of Shia Muslims as well as Kurds after they staged an uprising against the Baathist regime at our specific request - thousands whom webetrayed by leaving them to fight off Saddam's brutal hordes on their own. "Rioting," is how Lord Blair's meretricious "dodgy dossier" described these atrocities in 2002 - because, of course, to call them an "uprising" (which they were) would invite us to ask ourselves who contrived to provoke this bloodbath. Answer: us.
I and my colleagues watched this tragedy. I travelled on the hospital trains that brought the Iranians back from the 1980-88 war front, their gas wounds bubbling in giant blisters on their arms and faces, giving birth to smaller blisters that wobbled on top of their wounds. The British and Americans didn't want to know. I talked to the victims of Halabja. The Americans didn't want to know. My Associated Press colleague Mohamed Salaam saw the Iranian dead lying gassed in their thousands on the battlefields east of Basra. The Americans and the British didn't care.

But now we are to give the Iraqi people bread and circuses, the final hanging of Saddam, twisting, twisting slowly in the wind. We have won. We have inflicted justice upon the man whose country we invaded and eviscerated and caused to break apart. No, there is no sympathy for this man. "President Saddam Hussein has no fear of being executed," Bouchra Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer on his team, said in Beirut a few days ago. "He will not come out of prison to count his days and years in exile in Qatar or any other place. He will come out of prison to go to the presidency or to his grave." It looks like the grave. Keitel went there. Ceausescu went there. Milosevic escaped sentence.

The odd thing is that Iraq is now swamped with mass murderers, guilty of rape and massacre and throat-slitting and torture in the years since our "liberation" of Iraq. Many of them work for the Iraqi government we are currently supporting, democratically elected, of course. And these war criminals, in some cases, are paid by us, through the ministries we set up under this democratic government. And they will not be tried. Or hanged. That is the extent of our cynicism. And our shame. Have ever justice and hypocrisy been so obscenely joined?

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1959051.ece

#37

ALquds Tue, 7 Nov 2006 - 10:34

a british soldier has died following an attack on an army base in the stronghold shia city of Basra, will bush tell the american voters that is hw the shia's are celebrating the death sentnce of saddam?.. saddam could have been given a fair trial and still be sntenced to death but i guess its not in the nature of America and her allies to be fair.. Fair trial would have meant people asking the same questions to bush, blair and all the puppet regimes in the middleast.

#38

The Great 100 Tue, 7 Nov 2006 - 16:16

ALquds...british soldier...army base in the stronghold shia city og Basra...america voters... shi's...saddam...America nad her allies...bush, blair and all the puppet regimes in the middleast...
______________
Gossip is the most destructive thing in the universe...

#39

yashmaki Tue, 7 Nov 2006 - 16:46

i thght this new puppet gov in iraq were apparenty following court proceedings in a democratic fashion.if that's the case shouldn't the death penalty follow democratic ways aswell? Hanging is hardly a demonstration of democratic style.

Also correct me if i'm wrong but in islam if that's what the iraqis claim to be following the death penatly for this sort of crime is off with the head, to minimise pain. Hanging would mean he'd effectively be tortured to death. As amusing and satisfying as it may appear to some torture is disgusting and totally forbidden in islam. That's assuming this is what the country is operating under.

So what are iraqies following democratic law, sharia law or something else?

btw i'm not a loyal supporter of Saddam, he deserves punishment for his crimes.

#40

ALquds Tue, 7 Nov 2006 - 21:54

lol thanks the great 100 for correctin me. typed it in a rush this morning and my finger's were all over the place lol and didnt even bother to read my reply.

#42

peacegirl Tue, 7 Nov 2006 - 22:06

zara

saima786Sadaam hussein deserves the death penalty...............just saying it like it is! After what he's done.......do you think he should get a prison sentance?

yes i think he should get a prison sentence

according to the shariah law..........he deserves the death penalty. and after all he gave the death penalty to many people!!!!

#43

Funzo Tue, 7 Nov 2006 - 22:16

you got to look on what he done hes done countless things assination attempted assinations murders the lot hes not a person who deserves to have prison sentence what is a prison sentence nowadays compared to the crime its just fair that he should be hung or shot or whateva but wat im tryin to say no prison sentence canmake up for what hes done i doesnt even come close to what he has done

#44

peacegirl Tue, 7 Nov 2006 - 22:19

F4nzoyou got to look on what he done hes done countless things assination attempted assinations murders the lot hes not a person who deserves to have prison sentence what is a prison sentence nowadays compared to the crime its just fair that he should be hung or shot or whateva but wat im tryin to say no prison sentence canmake up for what hes done i doesnt even come close to what he has done

i agree.........but pleas fell free to use full stops!!

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