Saddam, co-defendants sentenced to hang

Nov. 5, 2006, 4:39PM

BAGHDAD, Iraq — An Iraqi court on Sunday sentenced Saddam Hussein to the gallows for crimes against humanity, closing a quarter-century-old chapter of violent suppression in this land of long memories, deep grudges and sectarian slaughter.

The former Iraqi dictator and six subordinates were convicted and sentenced for the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single Shiite town after an attempt on his life there.

Shiites and Kurds, who had been tormented and killed in the tens of thousands under Saddam's iron rule, erupted in celebration _ but looked ahead fearfully for a potential backlash from the Sunni insurgency that some believe could be a final shove into all-out civil war.

Saddam trembled and shouted "God is great" when the hawk-faced chief judge, Raouf Abdul-Rahman, declared the former leader guilty and sentenced him to hang.

Televised, the trial was watched throughout Iraq and the Middle East as much for theater as for substance. Saddam was ejected from the courtroom repeatedly for his political harangues, and his half-brother and co-defendant, Barzan Ibrahim, once showed up in long underwear and sat with his back to the judges.

The nine-month trial had inflamed the nation, and three defense lawyers and a witness were murdered in the course of its 39 sessions.

"Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!" Saddam cried out after the verdict, before bailiffs took his arms and walked the once all-powerful leader from the courtroom. There was a hint of a smile on Saddam's face.

With justice for Saddam's crimes done, the U.S.-backed Shiite prime minister called for reconciliation and delivered the most eloquent speech of his five months in office.

"The verdict placed on the heads of the former regime does not represent a verdict for any one person. It is a verdict on a whole dark era that was unmatched in Iraq's history," Nouri al-Maliki said.

The White House praised the Iraqi judicial system and denied the U.S. had been "scheming" to have the historic verdict announced two days before American midterm elections, widely seen as a referendum on the Bush administration's policy in Iraq.

President Bush called the verdict "a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law."

"It's a major achievement for Iraq's young democracy and its constitutional government," the president said.

"Today, the victims of this regime have received a measure of the justice which many thought would never come," he added.

But symbolic of the split between the United States and many of its traditional allies over the Iraq war, many European nations voiced opposition to the death sentences in the case, including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. A leading Italian opposition figure called on the continent to press for Saddam's sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment.

Lost in the drama of Sunday's death sentence was any mention of the failed search for the alleged weapons of mass destruction that Bush said led the United States to invade and occupy Iraq in March 2003.

Saddam was found hiding with an unfired pistol in a hole in the ground near his home village north of Baghdad in December 2003, eight months after he fled the capital ahead of advancing American troops.

Twenty-two months later, he went on trial for ordering the torture and murder of nearly 150 Shiites from the city of Dujail. Saddam said those who were killed had been found guilty in a legitimate Iraqi court for trying to assassinate him in 1982.

Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, was sentenced to join the former leader on the gallows, as was Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujail residents.

Iraq's former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Three defendants were given up to 15 years in prison for torture and premeditated murder. Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid and his son, Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid, were party officials in Dujail, along with Ali Dayih Ali. They were believed responsible for the Dujail arrests.

A local Baath Party official Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted for lack of evidence.

In the streets of Dujail, a Tigris River city of 84,000, people celebrated and burned pictures of their former tormentor as the verdict was read. In Baghdad, the Shiite bastion of Sadr City exploded in jubilation.

But in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, not far from Dujail, 1,000 people defied the curfew and carried pictures of the city's favorite son through the streets. Some declared the court a product of the U.S. "occupation forces" and condemned the verdict. Policemen wept in the streets.

"By our souls, by our blood we sacrifice for you, Saddam," the Tikrit crowds chanted.

A trial envisioned to heal Iraq's deep ethnic and sectarian wounds appeared rather to have deepened the fissures.

"This government will be responsible for the consequences, with the deaths of hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands, whose blood will be shed," Salih al-Mutlaq, a Sunni political leader, told Al-Arabiya satellite television.

The death sentences automatically go to a nine-judge appeals panel, which has unlimited time to review the case. If the verdicts and sentences are upheld, the executions must be carried out within 30 days.

A court official told The Associated Press that the appeals process was likely to take three to four weeks once the formal paperwork was submitted. If the verdicts are upheld, those sentenced to death would be hanged despite Saddam's second, ongoing trial for allegedly murdering thousands of Iraq's Kurdish minority.

"The problem really is that this tribunal has not shown itself to be fair and impartial _ not only by international standards, but by Iraqi standards," said Sonya Sceats, an international law expert at the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank in London.

Saddam's Sunni supporters, the bulk of the insurgency that has killed the vast majority of American troops in Iraq, could still explode in violence once an open-ended curfew is lifted in coming days.

But the former leader's chief lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, told The Associated Press his client had called on Iraqis to reject violence and refrain from taking revenge on U.S. invaders.

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

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad issued a statement saying the verdicts "demonstrate the commitment of the Iraqi people to hold them accountable. ... closing the book on Saddam and his regime is an opportunity to unite and build a better future."

U.S. officials who advised the tribunal on standards of international justice said Saddam's repeated courtroom outbursts may have played a key part in the convictions. They cited his admission in a March 1 hearing that he had ordered the trial of the 148 Shiites, insisting that was legal because they had conspired to kill him.

"Where is the crime? Where is the crime?" Saddam asked the five-judge panel then.

Later in the same session, he argued that his co-defendants must be released and that because he was in charge, he alone must be tried. His outburst came a day after the prosecution presented a presidential decree with a signature they said was Saddam's approval for death sentences, their most direct evidence against him.

About 50 of those sentenced by the Revolutionary Court died during interrogation before they could be executed. Some of those hanged were children.

The United States has denied direct involvement in the trial, but some legal observers believe it was tainted by association with the American presence. Miranda Sissons, head of the Iraq program at the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York, said: "There will always be some doubt as to how much influence it exerted on the trial."

THANK GOD! HE'S DEAD! All we need is Osama and then we don't need to deal with Bush going on and on and on about this type of thing.

He is not dead yet.

He will be executed 30 days from today.

Just a few days shy of the anniversary of his capture.

**** I thought he was dead. Giving a date just gives him a chance for breaking out.

dude where talking about saddam here there is now way in hell that he could break or get broke out and besides where would he go.

they probably have him held up in some place way out in an isolated desert,and blind folded him when ever they took him somewhere.

also i cant belive that they hung children,how far did saddam go for that to happen!!!

Hey he's only one of the many people that kill and torture people... One of them may be dead now we just gotta find the others... I'm glad he's dead but still people are suffering, being hung, whipped, treated as slaves, shot and all the stuff like that...

He's dead but does that make up for the all the people who lost their lives?

I think he should be tortured in the worse way possible..

They should torture him bad enough to the pointwhere if he were about to die, we could send doctors in there just to patch him up, so that he would recover.. only to be tortured again.

That is what he deserves for everything that he has done.

Killing him would only make him a martyr.. and so, he doesn't deserve that honor..

That is why I think that is why they should keep him alive.

I think they should of tied him to a chair and let eveyone come and kick him... I know where i'd kick him

The legs?
No up
The chest?
No down
Oh that's gonna hurt

But this is the problem... if we kill him or torture him we're doing what he did.. And there's no point making him have pain since he's just gonna die anyway... Toturing him is stupid... I think they should of shaved him infront of everyone strip him and put him in rags... then tie him to a pole and burn him to death like what they did to witches... now that's torture humiliation and we get rid of him at the same time... and when he's dead we should hover up his ashed and throw them in Antartica where he deserved to live
:ermm: I don't know where i get these things from... I just hope it's pink mushy and has brain cells :unsure:

Martyr? I think not. His beliefs were deeply rooted in fear and he killed his own people. Hussain did not act for the good of anyone but himself and should perish because of it. He should be hanged, drawn, and quarted just as Guy Fawkes was and his remaining pieces should be thrown into a fire of some sort. Torture would be too good for him and death will be his only reward. I don't know if there is an afterlife or a Heaven and Hell but wherever his soul ends up will be his punishment. The people he killed will revell at the sight of him and the flogging will begin. We've waited for three years and knew what the outcome of his trial would be. I just want to be able to see it, the death of a man so vile, for my own eyes.

What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs who hangs from a wall? Art.
What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs who hangs from the gallows? Suddam.

If there's a will there's a way. Men have escaped Alcatraz in its prime, remember? I say kill him off now before it's too late. And I aggree with AJ. That guy will not be a martyr.

Oh yeah the escape it and died in the current :-_-:

A martyr is someone who dies for what they believe in..

Moussoui wanted to die because he believed that the Americans got what they deserved on 9/11..

Saddam believed that he was just in what he has done, which is why he still remains unapologetic.

Because Saddam believed that what he did was right, killing him would make him a martyr on those grounds alone.

The basis for said beliefs in this manner is irrelevant..

Anyway.. the asshole has less than a week to live, unless they held off on his execution..

I haven't heard much of anything about it since i posted this topic.

Mythbusters tested it and they made it themselves. So yeah, I think saddam can escape if he's lucky.

As for the martyr bit. He'll be a martyr for an unjust cause, so just don't give any attention to it.

Sadam was a dictator
LIke Hitler
And Starlin
So... yeah he had power

i agree with mistic mage he should be humilliated in all ways like make him walk the streets in heavy shakles on hands and feet while people would spit him, throw stuff at him and even receive a couple of punches from the people. Then they should (sort of ) torture him very cruelly Im talking about wips here and then shave him and the pole thing. Oh and put it all LIVE on global television Now that's a show worth watching!!! :evilgrin:

Power to the innocents, Cruelty to the evil!! :B):

I said that?

Wow
I forget to much

Is he dead yet?

Yeah
He's dead

Hey i wanna tell you something about Hitler

The reason he commited suicide is because one of his friends was caught by our side
And was killed and hung up in a street... People were aloud to punch him... kick him... throw stuff at him... anything

He commited suicide because they thought that they would do this to him.
We did this cause they did it to our people. It's only fair

I think that this is the rigth thing to do in cases like this...it will satisfact alot of nations, specialy alots of political tendencies....but everyone saw this comimg along time ago and at least everyone is going to feel that it has been done justice....after all he killed alot of inocent people and he must be punished for his acts...but the supremacy behind this event is much more complicated than it looks....but that's my opinion, and yes i too am in favor for Saddam death.

Good,Saddam is going to get his Just Desserts for all the bad things he's done,Karma's getting him back by him being executed.

How is he going to be excuted?

I think he's going to be hanged...

Well shit, with all of they hype caused by his capture, you'd think that they'd i dunno.. mention that he was dead.. i mean seriously..

It'll be the lethal injection

My brother wrote an articel about this. He is studying a law and it was showed in the university newspaper. As I know Saddam wasn't fully fair sentenced and although he should be punished for this I don't regard death for him as a good choice. Just locking him somewhere where he wouldn't do anything worse, or sending him to work would be a better option.

You see the readson they ain't doing the is because they're worried someone will try to break him out

Who? Citizens of Iraq? :huh:

Er
I don't know
Relatives
People he dealt with
Terrorists even?

Not only poeple who want to break him out
There'll be people who want him dead
Protesters who want him dead

They should castrate him and make sure he's concious,then break his arms,then punch him in the stomach about 21 times,then hang him.

:blink:

Well, an appelate court has decided to uphold the sentence.

The irony of it all is that the convicted were not allowed to Appeal their sentences, under Saddam's regime.. and yet, he himself, was allowed to do so.

As fucked up as his deeds were, I do not agree with his sentence.

They should give him life in prison, that way he could suffer.

Death is an easy way out.

Now that you think about it, spending your life with a woman named Bubba who wants to give you a human booster shot is a waaaaaaay better punishment than death.