The process that ended with his execution began with the launch of the 2003 US-led war to disarm Iraq's claimed weapons of mass destruction. The latter complaint was backed by the US-based Human Rights Watch. Many critics dismissed the conduct of the trial and Saddam Hussein's defence team had accused the Iraqi government of interfering in the proceedings. "It would have been much better for the execution to have taken place in Halabja, not in Baghdad," said Barham Khorsheed, a Kurd. In the Kurdish north, jubilation was tempered by the fear of deeper sectarian tensions and disappointment that Saddam would now not be able to stand trial for other charges including the gas attack on the town of Halabja that killed 5,000 people in 1988. "They can kill him 10 times but it won't bring safety to the streets because there is no state of law," said one Shia taxi driver who gave his name as Shawkat. In Iraq opinion was divided sharply along sectarian lines, with Sunni Muslims warning of "bloodbaths in the streets".Įven among Shia Muslims, terrorised for decades by Saddam, there was a sense of hopelessness. Launching the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, campaigns against the Kurds and putting down the southern Shia revolt that followed the 1991 Gulf war - triggered by his invasion of Kuwait - put the casualties attributable to his rule into the hundreds of thousands.īut the conviction that led to his hanging was for a relatively lower figure - the deaths of 148 men and boys from the Shia town of Dujail, where members of an opposition group had made a botched attempt to assassinate him in 1982. The execution, which became imminent after his appeal was this week rejected, brought to an end the life of one of the Middle East's most brutal dictators. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted. In Sadr City, a major Shia area in Baghdad, people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. Saddam's execution was followed by reports of a car bombing with as many as 30 dead in the Shia city of Kufa. The Iraqi state broadcaster, Iraqiya, later aired film of the lead-up to the execution but not the hanging itself. The office of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, released a statement that said Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people. In a prepared statement, George Bush cautioned that Saddam's execution would not stop the violence in Iraq but said it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror." The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab'," Mr Askari told the Associated Press.Īnother witness, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security advisor, said Saddam was "strangely submissive" in the execution chamber. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted. The former dictator, dressed in black, refused a hood and said he wanted the Koran he carried to the gallows to be given to a friend. One of those who witnessed the hanging, Sami al-Askari, an adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, said Saddam struggled when he was taken from his cell in a US military prison but was composed in his last moments.
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