Saddam Hussein sentenced to hang

[Menydh]

Saddam Hussein sentenced to hang

Al Jazeera
November 5, 2006

Saddam Hussein reacted defiantly to the court's verdict

Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, has been sentenced to death by a Baghdad court after being found guilty of crimes against humanity.

When the judge announced the sentence, Saddam appeared shaken.

However he soon recovered and shouted: "Allahu Akbar!" [God is greatest] and "Long live the nation!"

Saddam was found guilty by the Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday for ordering the killing of 178 Shia civilians in the town of Dujail in 1982.

The court said that he and his fellow defendants had ordered the villagers' murder after members of Dawa, a Shia political party, tried to kill Saddam in Dujail in 1982.

Saddam's sentence will be automatically appealed and reviewed by a panel of appeal judges, who will decide whether or not to allow a retrial.

If the judgement stands, however, Saddam must be executed within 30 days of the appeals panel delivering its verdict, the chief prosecutor has said.

Saddam, 69 said that he wants to be executed by firing squad. However Iraqi law states that he will be executed by hanging.

Saddam was president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003, when his Sunni-dominated government was deposed by a US-led invasion.

Eleven-month trial

Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, former head of the Iraqi secret police, and Awad Hamed Al-Bander, Saddam's chief judge were also sentenced to death by hanging by the court.

Saddam's 11-month trial was marked by theatrics by both his defence council and by Saddam and his seven co-defendants.

Taha Yassin Ramdan, the former Iraqi vice president was sentenced to life in prison.

The court also sentenced three of Saddam co-defendent to 15 years in prison for their part in the Dujail killing and acquitted one minor Baath party official.

Lawyer ejected

Ramsey Clark, Saddam's most outspoken American defender and a former US attorney general, was thrown out of the trial on Sunday and accused of insulting the people of Iraq.

Clark, a member of Saddam's defence team and a strident critic of the conduct of his trial at the Iraqi HighTribunal, attended the start of the session but was ejected before Saddam was sentenced to death by hanging.

"Get him out of the hall. He came from America to ridicule the Iraqi people and ridicule the court," Judge Raud Abdel Rahman said. "A bad arrow returns to the chest of its shooter."

After the hearing, chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mussawi told reporters that the court would file a complaint against Clark with the American bar association, and also accused him of contempt.

"Clark submitted a study containing phrases humiliating to the Iraqi people and subsequently the court had no option but to take a decision to dismiss him from the session," Mussawi said at a news conference.

Since Saddam's arrest, Clark has strenuously argued that the trial constitutes victor's justice and is an abuse of legal principles.

Baghdad tense

Before the verdict was announced, Iraq's government imposed a curfew in Baghdad, the mixed Sunni-Shia province of Diyala and Salahuddin, the province containing Saddam's home town of Tikrit.

But despite the curfews, Shias had gathered in Baghdad's Sadr City district to celebrate what they hoped would be a guilty verdict.

Meanwhile in and around Tikrit small groups of Saddam's supporters held protests and denounced the court's judgement.

Sheikh Al-Nadawi, the head of the Baigat group of tribes to which Saddam belongs, said: "Saddam lived a hero and will die as a hero. The court was set up by his rivals... It is a historical farce."

Government appeals for calm

On Saturday Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, said that he hoped Saddam would be found guilty, but also asked Iraqis to react calmly to the verdict.

"We hope the sentence matches what this man deserves for what he has done against the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people will express happiness in the way they find appropriate," al-Maliki said.

"We call upon the Iraqi people to be calm, to be disciplined and to express themselves in ways that take into consideration the security challenge and the need to protect the lives of citizens."


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[Menydh]

'Don't take revenge on US invaders'

The Jerusalem Post
November 5, 2006

Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis on Sunday to reject the sectarian violence ripping his country apart and to "not take revenge" on US invaders, his chief lawyer said after the ousted leader was sentenced to death.

"The message from President Saddam to his people came during a meeting in Baghdad this morning, just before the so-called Iraqi court issued its verdict in his trial," Khalil al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Baghdad.

"His message to the Iraqi people was 'pardon and do not take revenge on the invading nations and their people'," al-Dulaimi said, quoting Saddam.

"The president also asked his countrymen to 'unify in the face of sectarian strife'," the lawyer added.

Saddam and two other men on Sunday were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging for war crimes in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail. The former Iraqi leader shouted out in the court, condemning what he called the occupation of Iraq by US- and British-led coalition forces.

Al-Dulaimi said Saddam "knew that he would be sentenced to death and wanted me to pass on this message to the Iraqi people and to the whole world after the verdict was announced."

"The president said that 'Saddam Hussein won't be defeated. It's the men of Persia and those of the United States who will be'," al-Dulaimi said. "He said the people will remain strong and steadfast."

Al-Dulaimi condemned Saddam's trial as a "farce," alleging that the verdict was pre-planned, unfair and null, and said defense attorneys planned to appeal the verdict within 30 days, as Iraqi law stipulates.

"Since day one, we said the trial was politically motivated 100 percent and that it's completely illegal," he said. "The defense voice was not allowed to be heard at all."

Saddam's lawyer also claimed that the security situation in Baghdad after the verdict was "very dangerous."

"Iranian intelligence and US invaders are patrolling around. There's nobody else on the streets," al-Dulaimi said.

"The people, around 7 million Iraqis, have been kicked out of their homes, the streets are all sealed off; Baghdad looks like a ghost town," he said.


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[Theobald]

Although these Dujail killings are a real crime and Saddam probably deserves death penalty, in my opinion this American-made "High Tribunal" has no legitimity. This trial is a farce (a lawyer "ejected" ??).

By the way, American embargo killed far more than 178 Iraqi civilians.

[Menydh]

The US-led invasion and post-invasion have already accounted for more deaths than those occured with Saddam in power.

Further, Saddam was a nationalist, not an islamist. There was no Islamism in Iraq and the argument that Americans made up to start the war was that it was a part of the war against [Islamic] terrorism.

The truth is that Islamists hated Saddam but would not dare to move a finger in Iraq under the Baath's party rule. Islam is opposed to nationalism and the Baath party (both in Iraq and in Syria) are laicist and nationalist. How was then Saddam a target in a war against Islamic terrorism?

Notice how in the news article from The Jerusalem Posts they quote Saddam blaming Americans and Persians (i.e., Iranians, who are indeed fundamentalist muslims even if Shi'ites).