Posted on 01/01/2007 6:51:03 PM PST by blam
Outrage mounts over 'lynch mob' hanging
By Neil Tweedie
Last Updated: 2:01am GMT 02/01/2007
The execution of Saddam Hussein – widely condemned yesterday as more an exercise in lynch law than judicial punishment – was rushed through by the Iraqi government despite American requests for a delay.
A senior Iraqi source said the US ambassador in Baghdad wanted the hanging to be postponed for two weeks but relented when the Shia dominated government rushed through documents approving it. It appeared that the United States was anxious the execution should not be carried out with unseemly haste.
The disclosure follows a clamp-down in Iraq on media coverage of the execution amid growing revulsion at what many across the Sunni Muslim world regard as a sectarian act of revenge by a hostile administration. It followed television and internet broadcasts of unauthorized telephone camera pictures showing Saddam being taunted by Shia witnesses in the death chamber shortly before the hanging.
In the footage, which has attracted thousands of hits on the internet across the world, the onlookers can be heard chanting the Shia version of an Islamic prayer in a calculated final insult to Saddam, a member of Iraq's Sunni minority. As the noose is fitted another man can be heard telling Saddam he is going to hell.
The former president for life still manages a sarcastic response, asking his executioners: "Do you consider this bravery?"
The witnesses also repeatedly call out the name of the militant Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, before cheering as Saddam's body crashes through the trapdoor of the gallows. The dictator's last words were "there is no God but Allah and I testify that Mohammed is the messenger of God".
The soundtrack and images contrasted sharply with officially-released silent pictures of Saturday's execution portraying it as much more subdued and dignified event. There have also been reports that Saddam, 69, was taunted by his executioners in his cell in the hours before his death, with one brandishing the rope that would later hang him.
"The Americans wanted to delay the execution by 15 days because they weren't keen on having him executed straight away," said a senior Iraqi source. "But during the day [on Friday] the prime minister's office provided all the documents they asked for and the Americans changed their minds when they saw the prime minister was very insistent. Then it was just a case of finalising the details."
The lack of neutrality or dignity during the hanging, combined with the decision to rush it through at the start of the Muslim festival of Eid, has raised fears of a widespread Sunni backlash. Demonstrations as far apart as Jordan and Kashmir were accompanied by condemnation in the Arab press. The unauthorized footage also undermined American and British attempts to portray the execution as an impartial judicial event. The Foreign Office refused to comment on it yesterday.
US forces, who had held Saddam since his capture in December 2003, handed him over only four hours before his death following the conclusion of negotiations between the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and American officials.
Saddam had been sentenced to death for overseeing the murder of 148 Shia civilians in the town of Dujail following an alleged assassination attempt against him. His appeal against the death sentence failed on Dec 26, the court instructing that he should be hanged within 30 days.
According to the Iraqi source, the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told Mr Maliki that he would not hand over Saddam unless he signed a death warrant and obtained authorisation from the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani.
Mr Maliki was said to be anxious to rush through the execution to gain maximum credit among the fractious Shia community, but Mr Talabani, a Kurd, was anxious to see Saddam tried for crimes against his people. Mr Maliki won out. No presidential decree was judged to be needed and Mr Maliki signed the death warrant in front of television cameras. Shia clerics said there was no religious problem with a Saturday execution as Eid would not have begun.
"There were a few guards who shouted slogans that were inappropriate and that's now the subject of a government investigation," said Sami al-Askari, an adviser to Mr Maliki. "That should not have happened. Before we went into the room we had an agreement that no one should bring a mobile phone."
No Americans were present in the death chamber.
US officials discussed burying Saddam in the US-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, but later agreed to have his body flown to Tikrit.
Yesterday, the Iraqi government ordered the closure of the Sharkiya television station, which is seen as sympathetic to the Sunni community, accusing it of stirring up sectarian hatred over the execution.
But it was the government of Mr Maliki that was being blamed inside and outside Iraq for inciting religious hatred. The Sunni cleric group in Iraq, the Muslim Scholars' Association, described the hanging as a "purely political act".
Its timing on the day that Sunnis celebrated the start of Eid was a calculated provocation showing the "grudge" still held by the Shia. The Saudi newspaper Al-Watan attacked the "sectarianism gripping the corridors of power in Iraq" while the Qatar-based daily Al-Sharq described the hanging as an act of sectarian revenge by the Shia majority in Iraq, which suffered for decades under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.
Saddam's eldest daughter Raghad joined a demonstration in the Jordanian capital Amman. The demonstrators chanted anti-American and pro-Saddam slogans. Raghad, who is exiled in Jordan, told protesters: "I want to thank you for this show of support. May God protect you." One of the banners held by protesters read: "Leader Saddam the father of martyrs".
Demonstrations also continued in Saddam's heartland. In Al-Dawr, near to Saddam's home village of Awja, where he was buried on Sunday, hundreds of Sunnis took to the streets. Nearby in Tikrit, dozens of mourning tents were erected.
Can you duplicate the fidelity?
I posted this on another thread, but it fits here too:
What's making me sick is the whining going on about how those bad guards taunted poor old Saddam before opening the trap door and getting rid of him. After what the Shi'ites suffered at the hands of Saddam, what would anyone expect, that they not be overjoyed the tyrant is dead? They were vying for the job of being the ones to get to hang him. I would have tried to get a few verbal shots in too before offing him. That's the human reaction. Those that hung him weren't automatoms. Some of their families suffered horribly at Saddam's hands of gov't. Torture, death. And people are complaining because they mouthed off for a couple of minutes to the one that caused all their grief? And of course there are the attempts to somehow link this behavior to the U.S., how we bumped Saddam off too quickly. Like waiting for some more time to pass would have helped how? The Sunni's were going to be PO'd regardless of when Saddam was hung. So, let them be angry. They are already, and they are causing most of the bombings of our troops and of the Shi'a. I'm amazed at the restraint the Shi'a have showed. My instinct would be to try to stomp the Sunni's that have been causing most of the insurrection, into the ground. And, by the way, I don't like the Shi'a any better than the Sunni's, but at the moment it is the Sunni's, backed by the fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia, and some from Syria, that have caused many of the problems. The Iranians are causing trouble backing Al Sadr and his militias in response. But it's the Sunni's that have started most of the sectarian violence, and now that their main man Saddam has bit the dust, they better catch on that they are on the wrong end of a losing proposition now. Either they cut a deal or they will go down in the long run.
Thank you, flaglady47.
BTTT!
Its a shame all these pompous do gooders who were not the recipients of Saddams brand of justice, misplace their outrage in favor of him, instead of all the hundreds of thousands he murdered and tortured. Once again the idiot liberal minds at work.
First I would like to say that it has been over twenty years since the act took place which Saddam was convicted of. This can not be said to be a rush by anyone applying common sense. He was tried by his peers, his own countrymen, in a court that saw reccommendations and arguements from all over the world. His sentence was reviewed and deemed lawful. Game Set Match.
Second I would point out that if there was a huge dog and pony show for the hanging this article would be about ourage at the dog and pony show surrounding his hanging and how it should have been done in private (as it was actually done).
What this screed demonstrates is that no matter what is done or not done, no matter how or when it is done or not done, someoone will come out and say it should have been differently or not at all.
Saddam was hanged for what he has done and the hanging, no matter how or when it took place, was long overdue and done in as just a way as it could have been.
I am not sure why but there are apparently no limits to your attempts to defend Al Sadr. You tried to discount the the allegation of Sadr supporters mocking Saddam first post by saying you are "Not so sure it's sectarian. ... there are a multiplicity of meanings."
You try again by insisting the cellphone was incapable of recording with the audio fidelity displayed in the video.(suggesting the audio was tampered with?) Can you disprove the cellphone was incapable of the fidelity displayed in the video?, You ask me how my Arabic is, all to defend Al Sadr. How's your Arabic?
There is an Iraqi government investigation ongoing now that alleges the only two observers who were allowed to take in cellphones were high ranking government officials. But I feel differently than you, no big deal. I don't particularly care.
So you win. Al Sadr is a great guy. And it was worth 3000 US troopers lives to take Iraq away from the Bathists and potentially turn it over to the Iranian backed Sadrists.
Your conclusion that I must be defending Sadr is a typical Sunni terrorist trick that we've come to expect any time you guys get caught peddling some of your nonsense, whether it's here, or in Iraq, or something one of your little terrorist buddies did to innocent Israelis.
You are nuts.
Time for you to defend your accusations against me. Long overdue in fact.
What is outrageous is the outrage. Sadr is another tyrant and he and his Dawa thugs should be squashed fortwith, but to lament the passing of this brutal murderer is disgusting.
OLIPHANTS' SMEAR-TOON
http://p132.news.scd.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20070103/cx_po_uc/po20070103
LATEST DUMP OF SADDAM-DAMNING EVIDENCE
Hussein’s Voice Speaks in Court in Praise of Chemical Atrocities
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: January 9, 2007
BAGHDAD, Jan. 8 — The courtroom he dominated for 15 months seemed much smaller on Monday without him there to mock the judges and assert his menacing place in history.
But the thick, high-register voice of Saddam Hussein was unmistakable. In audio recordings made years ago and played 10 days after his hanging, Mr. Hussein was heard justifying the use of chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s, predicting they would kill “thousands” and saying he alone among Iraq’s leaders had the authority to order chemical attacks.
In the history of prosecutions against some of the last century’s grimmest men, there can rarely have been a moment that so starkly caught a despot’s unpitying nature.
On one recording, Mr. Hussein presses the merits of chemical weapons on Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, his vice-president, and now, the Americans believe, the fugitive leader of the Sunni insurgency that has tied down thousands of American troops. Mr. Douri, a notorious hard-liner, asks whether chemical attacks will be effective against civilian populations, and suggests that they might stir an international outcry.
“Yes, they’re very effective if people don’t wear masks,” Mr. Hussein replies.
“You mean they will kill thousands?” Mr. Douri asks.
“Yes, they will kill thousands,” Mr. Hussein says.
Before he was hanged Dec. 30 for offenses in another case, Mr. Hussein had used the so-called Anfal trial, involving the massacre of as many as 180,000 Iraqi Kurds, as a platform for arguing that the chemical weapons attacks of the kind that devastated the town of Halabja on March 16, 1988, were carried out by Iranian forces then fighting Iraq in an eight-year war.
But the recordings told another story. Court officials gave no hint as to how they obtained the recordings, which Iraqis familiar with Mr. Hussein’s voice said seemed to be authentic. But they appeared to have been made during meetings of his Revolutionary Command Council and of the Baath Party High Command, two groups that acted as rubber stamps for his decisions. Mr. Hussein regularly ordered meetings to be recorded, according to Iraqis who knew the inner workings of Mr. Hussein’s dictatorship.
Mr. Hussein sounds matter of fact as he describes what chemical weapons will do. “They will prevent people eating and drinking the local water, and they won’t be able to sleep in their beds,” he says. “They will force people to leave their homes and make them uninhabitable until they have been decontaminated.”
As for the concern about international reaction, he assures Mr. Douri that only he will order the attacks. “I don’t know if you know this, Comrade Izzat, but chemical weapons are not used unless I personally give the orders,” he says.
When Iraq resumed the genocide trial of its former leaders on Monday, Mr. Hussein’s high-backed, black vinyl seat at the front of the dock was left ominously empty. Something about the six remaining defendants, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, Mr. Hussein’s cousin, who was known among Iraqis as Chemical Ali for his role in overseeing the attacks on the Kurds, suggested that they felt orphaned without the commanding presence of Mr. Hussein.
Gone were the cries of “Mr. President!” as Mr. Hussein entered the court to join them in the dock, and gone, too, was the emboldened posture they took from Mr. Hussein, with frequent challenges and insults to witnesses, prosecutors and judges. Perhaps Mr. Hussein’s hanging, and the humiliating taunts he endured from witnesses and guards as he stood with the noose around his neck, had broken the last illusions among those surviving him that they could somehow evade a similar end.
When the chief judge, Muhammad Ureibi al-Khalifa, began the proceedings by abruptly cutting the microphone as Mr. Majid stood to intone a prayer in memory of Mr. Hussein, the former dictator seemed to be judicially, as well as existentially, dead. But the anticlimactic beginning swiftly gave way to the most astonishing day of testimony since Mr. Hussein and his associates went on trial. Once more, it was Mr. Hussein, this time in an involuntary orgy of self-incrimination, who dominated.
In the sequence of scratchy recordings — some with the dialogue quite clear, some barely decipherable — Mr. Hussein repeatedly showed the ready resort to brutality that seized Iraq with fear during his 24 years in power. At one point, he is heard telling a general to summarily execute field commanders who fail to adequately prepare their defenses against Kurdish guerrilla raids.
He cites as a precedent “some commanders who abandoned their positions when they found themselves in an awkward situation, who deserved to have their necks cut, and did.” At another point, he tells subordinates to execute any internal security officials who fail to stop Iraqi soldiers sneaking home from the Iranian front on fake passes.
“If you arrest any of them, cut off their heads,” he says. “Show no mercy. They only joined the security to avoid having to join the army and fight Iran.”
One recording revealed, more clearly than anything before, Mr. Hussein’s personal involvement in covering up Iraq’s attempts to acquire unconventional weapons, the program that ultimately led to President Bush sending American troops to overthrow him. Talking to the general who led Iraq’s dealings with United Nations weapons inspectors until weeks before the 2003 invasion, he counseled caution in the figures being divulged on the extent of Iraq’s raw supplies for chemical weapons, so as to disguise the use of unaccounted-for chemicals in the attacks on the Kurds.
But it was Mr. Hussein’s chilling discussion of the power of chemical weapons against civilians that brought prosecutors and judges to the verge of tears, and seemed to shock the remaining defendants. One of the recordings featured an unidentified military officer telling Mr. Hussein that a plan was under development for having Soviet-built aircraft carry containers, packed with up to 50 napalm bombs each, which would be rolled out of the cargo deck and dropped on Kurdish towns.
“Yes, in areas where you have concentrated populations, that would be useful,” Mr. Hussein replies.
Another recording involves a General Thabit, who was not further identified by the prosecutors, telling Mr. Hussein that his forces had used chemical weapons in the northern sector of Kurdistan, but that “our supplies of the weapons were low, and we didn’t make good use of the ones we had.”
The general notes that Iraq’s production of mustard gas and sarin, a nerve gas, was “very low,” and says they should be used sparingly. “We’re keeping what we have for the future,” he says.
Before they recovered enough to begin pleading their innocence, Mr. Hussein’s erstwhile companions in the dock buried their heads in their hands, gazed at the floor, and glanced furtively toward TV cameras transmitting live coverage of the trial. Mr. Majid shifted uneasily in his seat as one recording had him telling officials to warn Kurdish refugees that they would be attacked with chemical weapons if they attempted to return to their villages.
The prosecutor, Munkith al-Faroun, came to court as almost the only person who attended Mr. Hussein’s execution on Dec. 30 to emerge with an unsullied reputation. It was he, as he and others confirmed, who attempted to halt the taunts hurled at Mr. Hussein as he stood with the noose around his neck, moments before the trapdoor opened. Over the hubbub, an illicit camera phone recording showed Mr. Faroun calling out for silence, “Please, no!” he said. “The man is about to be executed.”
But back in the courtroom, Mr. Faroun became, again, the man holding Mr. Hussein to account and, in one poignant moment, counseling restraint among those who have expressed outrage over the manner of the former ruler’s execution. That moment came after the court watched television images taken after the Halabja attack, which more than any other event focused world attention on the atrocities committed under Mr. Hussein.
The video showed the horrors: a father wailing in grief as he found his children lying along a street littered with bodies; dead mothers clutching gas-choked infants to their breasts in swaddling clothes; young sisters embracing each other in death; and trucks piled high with civilian bodies. “I ask the whole world to look at these images, especially those who are crying right now,” Mr. Faroun said, referring to the outpouring of sympathy for Mr. Hussein.
The recordings played at Monday’s trial session, seemingly eliminating any doubt about Mr. Hussein’s role in the attacks on the Kurds, may go a long way to answering criticism of the government for executing him before he was judged for the worst of his crimes.
American justice department lawyers, who have done much of the behind-the-scenes work in sifting tons of documents and other evidence gathered after the invasion of 2003, had never hinted that they held the trump card, judicially and historically, that the audio recordings seem likely to be.
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