Sunday, December 31, 2006 Saddam dies on the gallows, after a brutal reign
BAGHDAD, Iraq—Saddam Hussein, among the world’s most brutal dictators, struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners.
But as his final moments approached, he grew calm.
Dressed in a black coat and trousers, he clutched a Koran as he was led to the gallows, and in one final moment of defiance, refused to have a hood pulled over his head.
After a quarter-century of brutality that killed thousands and led Iraq into disastrous wars against the United States and Iran, Saddam was executed before sunrise yesterday.
Within hours of his death, at least 46 people died and more than 80 were wounded in two bombings: 31 in one attack south of the capital and 15 in a Baghdad blast.
A man whose testimony led to Saddam’s conviction and execution said he was shown the body because “everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed.”
“Now, he is in the garbage bin of history,” said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.
Iraqi television showed what it said was the body of Saddam Hussein after his execution Saturday.
Dancing in Sadr
In Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate his death. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted, to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.
It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader.
Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.
The execution took place during the year’s deadliest month for US troops, with the toll reaching 108.
Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he heard the news. “Now all the victims’ families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence,” said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 130 kilometers south of Baghdad.
But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death.
‘Martyr’
“The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior,” said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at Saddam Big Mosque.
Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets of Tikrit in spite of the curfew, carrying pictures of Saddam and shooting into the air and calling for vengeance for Saddam’s execution.
More than 2,000 people, many carrying weapons, demonstrated in Adwar, a village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by US troops hiding in an underground bunker. It is also the hometown of Saddam’s former No. 2, Izzat Ibrahim, who is still at large.
Saddam’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were not hanged along with their former leader as originally planned.
Officials wanted to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone.
“We wanted him to be executed on a special day,” National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run Iraqiya TV.
Last words
Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, provided The Associated Press with some details of his handover to Iraqi authorities and his execution. He said Saddam initially resisted when he was taken by Iraqi guards but was composed in his final moments.
He said Saddam was clad in a black suit, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb. His hat was removed shortly before the noose was slipped around his neck. His hands were also tied before he walked up to the scaffold.
Shortly before the execution, Saddam was asked if he wanted to say something.
“No, I don’t want to,” al-Askari, who was present at the execution, quoted Saddam as saying. Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.
“Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a hood,” al-Askari said. “Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: ‘God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab.’”
Strong lesson
Iraqi state television showed footage of guards in ski masks placing a noose around Saddam’s neck. Saddam appears calm as he stands on the metal framework of the gallows. The footage cuts off just before the execution.
Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. During his regime, Saddam had numerous dissidents executed in the facility, located in a neighborhood that is home to the Iraqi capital’s most important Shiite shrine—the Imam Kazim shrine.
The Iraqi prime minister’s office released a statement that said Saddam’s execution was a “strong lesson” to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people.
The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail. Iraq’s highest court rejected Saddam’s appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.
In a farewell message to Iraqis written on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the US. “Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs,” he said in the letter, posted Wednesday.
