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.
We should tell Assad he's next.
Scott Peterson had one of the most well known and top rated attorneys with all the resources afforded by his legal firm, and his death sentence will take between 16 to 20+ years to be carried out. That is, if the death penalty doesn't get thrown out again. He cannot claim inadequate council, but will be able to delay and delay and delay anyway.
I never saw so much angst over the execution of a mass murderer. What a hypocritical farce.
During the entire second world war, the NYTimes made six mentions, on inside pages, of what Hitler was doing to the Jews. When Saddam was murdering his countrymen, the other countries were happy to do business with him. Today, the Iranians regularly hang, by strangulation, women who have been raped. Is there a world-wide outcry? Nah.
Typical British media.
What's the point of mounting "outrage" in Europe? He's dead Jim...no amount of outrage is going to change that.
I agree. Dog bites bites man, Muslims outraged. These guys are going to find something to be outraged about. If they can't, that will likely outrage them as well.
Saddam doesn't count. The other two died of Natural Causes.
And just WHO is outraged? Insurgents? The Guardian? The Beeb? Seems like the only people who should be relevant to the discussion is the Iraqi people, and I don't think they believe it was anything resembling a 'lynch mob'.
Let's hope by the end of 2007 it will be Ahamdinejad, Sadr and Nasrallah. The Shia Trio of Terror has to die.
Sadamn should have been hung in 1991 for the murders and rape that he ordered against the citizens of Kuwait! He was living on borrowed time given to him by the liberal do-gooders of this world.......
The greater world won't miss him.....
must be somebody down at CBS whose knickers are in a knot that he was'nt consulted about when this event should take place......
I think all rational and irrational people would agree that we are much better off without this guy.
Unfortunately, there's always somebody out there who wants us to feel sorry for a mass murderer.
Strange, my contacts 'over there' said the Iraqi's were celebrating in the streets. I believe those who were protesting didn't live under Sadam's rule, those who did are rightly celebrating his death.
-Traveler
"The lack of neutrality or dignity during the hanging ...".
Lack of "neutrality?" Neutrality? Maybe they wanted for half the people in the room to have been pro-Kurd-gassing, pro-rape-room, pro-hand-sawing-off, pro-torture-for-political-opposition Saddam fans? Yeah, that would have made it a lot more dignified.
I really get sick of hearing liberals spout off "I'm outraged" over anything and everything that they don't want. As if we're supposed to say "well, if your **outraged** then we give up."
Probably a minor point, but surely they mean rushed in relation to Western standards. But, but... I thought the relative morality crowd always say it's wrong to judge other cultures by our standards?? But here, they are quick to maintain that the new Iraqi regime is "vengeful" and not admirable because it "rushed" (by Western standards?) through Saddam's execution.
The press just isn't getting the "outrage" they want, so they're desperately trying to manufacture some.
Just unbelievably transparent.
Babies.
"I guess some people would complain if they were hung by a new rope."
One of my dad's favorite lines when we whined as children.
Not only his father and two brothers were murdered by Saddam.
Also his father-in-law and his sister where literally slaugthered by Saddam's thugs.
Sadr is a threat, our enemy, a dangerous islamo-fascist thug, but he has plenty good reasons to hate Saddam. And if it weren't for the ugly political symbolism, I would resent the fact that Saddam was taunted with the names of Baqir and Moqtada al-Sadr.
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