maybe his last days by New York Times is more interesting:
Saddam His Last Days
As US-Iraqis disagreed, Saddam still believed he might cheat
hanging in the end because of crucial negotiations. NY Times.
Jan 7, 2007
By John F. Burns
Baghdad When American soldiers woke Saddam Hussein in his cell
near Baghdad airport at 3:55 a.m. last Saturday, they told him to
dress for a journey to Baghdad. He had followed the routine dozens
of times before, travelling by helicopter in the predawn darkness
to the courtroom where he spent 14 months on trial for his
life.
When his cell lights were dimmed on Friday night, Mr. Hussein may
have hoped that he would live a few days longer, and perhaps cheat
the hangman altogether.
According to Task Force 134, the American military unit responsible
for all Iraqi detainees, Mr Hussein had heard some of the rumors
on the radio about potential execution dates.
But never one to understate his own importance, he had told his
lawyers for months that the Americans might spare him in the end,
for negotiations to end the insurgency whose daily bombings rattled
his cellblock windows.
As Mr. Hussein prepared to walk out into the chill of the desert
winter, dressed in a tailored black overcoat, that last illusion
was shattered.
After being roused and told that he was being transferred to Iraqi
custody, a task force statement e-mailed to The New York Times a
week later revealed, he immediately indicated that he knew the
execution would soon follow.
As he left the detention area, he thanked the guards and medics
for the treatment he had received, Lt Col Keir-Kevin Curry,
spokesman for the task force, said.
Mr Hussein was then driven to a waiting Black Hawk helicopter for a
10-minute flight to the old Istikhbarat prison in northern Baghdad,
where a party of Iraqi officials awaited him at the gallows.
During this brief period of transfer, Saddam Hussein appeared more
serious, the task force said.
The time as the helicopter took off was 5:05 am, and Mr Hussein had
65 minutes to live. But as he flew over the darkened suburbs of a
Baghdad enduring another winter with only flickering electrical
power, he can have known little of the last-minute battle waged
between top Iraqi and American officials and among the Americans
themselves over whether the execution, fraught with legal
ambiguities and Islamic religious sensitivities, should go
ahead.
American opposition to executing him in haste centered partly on
the fact that the Id al-Adha religious holiday, marking the end of
the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, began for Sunnis at sunrise
on Saturday.
In Baghdad that day, the sun was to rise at 7:06 am Iraqi
government officials had promised the hanging would be over before
the dawn light began seeping through the palm trees that shade the
capitals streets.
The taunts Mr Hussein endured from Shiite guards as he stood with
the noose around his neck have made headlines around the world, and
stirred angry protests among his fellow Iraqi Sunnis.
But the story of how American commanders and diplomats fought to
halt the execution until midnight on Friday, only six hours before
Mr Hussein was hanged, is only now coming into focus, as Iraqi and
American officials, in the glare of international outrage over the
hanging, compete with their versions of what happened.
Tensions boil over
It is a story of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki,
trying to coerce second-tier American military and diplomatic
officials into handing Mr Hussein over, first on Thursday night,
then again on Friday.
The American pushback was complicated by the absences of Ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad and the top American military commander, Gen
George W. Casey Jr., who were both out of Iraq on leave. The
American message, throughout, was that rushing Mr. Hussein to the
gallows could rebound disastrously, as it did.
It is a story, too, of the Americans disagreeing among themselves.
After a final call to Mr Maliki at 10:30 pm Friday, American and
Iraqi officials said, Mr Khalilzad concluded that there was no
prospect of persuading the Iraqis to delay the execution and passed
that message to Washington.
It was not a conclusion that found much favour with the military,
who were the ones who had to transport Mr Hussein to the
gallows.
For General Casey and Mr. Khalilzad, close partners here, the messy
ending for Mr Hussein was made worse by the confirmation this week
that Mr. Bush will soon replace both men as he refashions his Iraq
war policy.
There were disputes, as well, among the Iraqis. At least one senior
judge from the tribunal that sentenced Mr Hussein to die, and three
American lawyers who worked closely with the Iraqis at his trials,
fought their own rearguard battle, telling fellow Iraqis how
surprised they were that he received the death sentence in the
narrow case that produced it the systematic persecution of a
small Shiite town north of Baghdad, Dujail, after an alleged
assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein there in 1982.
In interviews with dozens of American and Iraqi officials involved
in the hanging, a picture has emerged of a clash of cultures and
political interests, reflecting the widening gulf between Americans
here and the Iraqi exiles who rode to power behind American
tanks.
Even before a smuggled cellphone camera recording revealed the
derision Mr Hussein faced on the gallows, the hanging had become a
metaphor, among Mr Malikis critics, for how the new Iraq is
starting to resemble, albeit in paler shade, the repressive,
vengeful place it was under Mr. Hussein.
The hanging spread wide dismay among the Americans. Aides said
American commanders were deeply upset by the way they were forced
to hand Mr Hussein over, a sequence commanders saw as motivated
less by a concern for justice than for revenge.
In the days following the hanging, recriminations flowed between
the military command and the United States Embassy, accused by some
officers of abandoning American interests at midnight Friday in
favor of placating Mr. Maliki and hard-line Shiites.
But for Mr Malikis inner circle, the hanging was a moment to
avenge decades of brutal repression by Mr Hussein, as well as a
moment to drive home to Iraqs five million Sunnis that after
centuries of subjugation, Shiites are in power to stay.
At the White House, as his officials now describe Mr Malikis
headquarters in the Green Zone, a celebratory dinner began on
Friday night even before the Americans withdrew their threat not to
hand over Mr Hussein.
An Iraqi who attended the hanging said the government saw the
Americans as wasting time with their demands for a delay until
after the four-day Id al-Adha holiday, and for whatever time beyond
that required to obtain the legal authorizations necessary to meet
the Americans stipulations.
For the Americans to claim the moral high ground afterward by
disavowing the hanging, the Iraqi said, was disingenuous.
They cannot wash their hands, this is a joint responsibility, he
said. They had the physical custody and we had the legal custody.
At one point, I asked, Is it our call or is it your call? They
said, Its your call. I said, If its our call, weve made the
decision.
In a speech on Saturday, a week after the hanging, Mr Maliki showed
that he remains as angry as the Americans.
Hitting out at governments and human rights organizations around
the world that have condemned the hanging, he said they were
hypocritical.
Were wondering where these organisations were during the crimes
of Anfal and Halabja, he said, referring to Mr. Husseins
persecution of Iraqi Kurds.
Where were they during the mass graves and the executions and the
massacres that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?
Differing timelines
The countdown to the hanging began eight weeks earlier, on Nov 5,
as Raouf Abdel-Rahman, the chief judge in the Dujail case, passed
death sentences on Mr Hussein and two associates, Barzan Ibrahim
al-Tikriti, Mr Husseins half-brother, and Awad al-Bandar, chief
judge of Mr Husseins revolutionary court, for crimes against
humanity in the hanging of 148 men and boys from the Shiite
town.
Go to hell, you and the court! Mr. Hussein yelled, as bailiffs
ushered him from the court.
The widespread expectation was that the appeal of the death
sentences would run for months, allowing time for the more
notorious Anfal case, involving genocide in the killing of 180,000
Kurds, to be completed before Mr Hussein was hanged.
American lawyers in the embassys Regime Crimes Liaison Office, the
behind-the-scenes organiser of the trials, predicted Mr. Husseins
execution in the spring.
When the tribunals appeals bench announced that it had upheld the
death sentences on Dec. 26, three weeks into the appeal, even
prosecutors were stunned. Defense lawyers said Mr Hussein was being
railroaded under pressure from Mr Maliki, who told a BBC
interviewer shortly after the Dujail verdict that he expected the
ousted ruler to be hanged before the end of the year.
The suspicion that the judges had submitted to government pressure
was shared by some Americans working with the tribunal, who had
stifled their growing disillusionment with the governments
interference for months.
The appeals courts apparent eagerness to fast-forward Mr Hussein
to the gallows and the scenes at the execution itself broke the
floodgates of restraint for at least one of the American lawyers.
I am disgusted, said one.
We had thought the court would be a beacon of light in a very dark
landscape. But the way it has come out with the hanging, weve
substituted one dictatorship for another.
On the Thursday before the hanging, American military officials
were summoned. Both Mr Khalilzad and General Casey were on
vacation, so the American team handling negotiations with Mr Maliki
and his officials was headed by Maj Gen Jack Gardner, head of Task
Force 134, the detainee unit, and Margaret Scobey, head of the
embassys political section.
Iraqi officials said neither carried much weight with Mr Maliki,
who had learned through bruising confrontations to be wary of
alienating Mr Khalilzad and General Casey, both of whom have direct
access to President Bush.
At the Thursday afternoon meeting, tempers frayed. According to an
Iraqi legal expert at the meeting, Iraqi officials demanded that
the Americans hand over Mr Hussein that night, for an execution
before dawn on Friday.
General Gardner responded with demands of his own, for letters
affirming the legality of the execution from Mr. Maliki, President
Jalal Talabani and the chief judge of the high tribunal that
convicted Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi legal expert said.
The focus was on two issues: a constitutional requirement that
Iraqs three-man presidency council approve all executions, and a
Hussein-era law forbidding executions during religious
holidays.
Mr. Talabani, a death penalty opponent, refused to sign off on the
hanging, but did sign a letter for Mr Maliki saying he had no
objections if the government went ahead.
The Iraqis, bolstering their case, said that the Hussein tribunals
own statute, drafted by the Americans, placed its rulings beyond
review.
They dismissed the holiday ban on executions, saying Iraqs death
penalty law had been suspended by the Americans in 2003 and that
the new Iraqi Parliament, in reviving it in 2004, had not
reinstituted the ban.
An Iraqi participant who opposed the hanging said that Mowaffak
al-Rubaie, Mr. Malikis national security adviser, said angrily,
This is an Iraqi issue, and added, Who is going to execute him
anyway, you or us? When the Americans insisted they would not hand
over Mr. Hussein without the letters, another Iraqi official
exploded: Just give him to us!
By Thursday evening, pressures for a quick hanging were growing.
Esam al-Gazawi, a Hussein lawyer, said by telephone from Jordan
that his legal team had been denied a final visit to Camp Cropper,
the American detention center, and that they had been told to send
somebody to collect Mr. Husseins personal belongings.
Around midnight on Thursday, the meeting broke up, and General
Gardner contacted commanders at Camp Cropper.
By then, the American command had entered what it called its
X-hour sequence, a 10-hour countdown to the execution that
provided a timeline for everything the Americans needed to do to
ensure Mr Husseins secure and dignified delivery to the
execution site.
Negotiations resumed Friday morning. In Phoenix, ten time zones
away, General Casey was monitoring the exchanges in signals traffic
from Baghdad.
American military officials remained opposed to an immediate
hanging, telling Mr Maliki that beyond the legal issues, there was
a question of his governments need to gain international support
by carrying out the hanging in a way that could withstand any
criticism.
We said, You have to do it by international law, you have to do
it in accordance with international standards of decorum, you have
to establish yourselves as a nation under law, an American
official recounted.
When Mr Maliki said the Americans should respect Iraqs right to
decide matters for itself, American officials said, one of the
Americans said: Forget about us. Youre in front of the
international community here. People will be watching this.
The arguments continued deep into the Iraqi night. General Gardner
and Ms Scobey returned at one point to the former Republican
Palace, the American headquarters in the Green Zone, seeking
Washingtons advice. Workarounds for the legal problems were
discussed.
At 10:30 pm, Ambassador Khalilzad made a last-ditch call to Mr
Maliki asking him not to proceed with the hanging.
When the Iraqi leader remained adamant, an American official said,
the ambassador made a second call to Washington conveying the
determination of the Iraqi prime minister to go forward, and his
conclusion that there was nothing more, consistent with respect for
Iraqi sovereignty, that the US could do.
Senior Bush administration officials in Washington said that said
that Mr Khalilzads principal contact in Washington was Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, and that she gave the green light for Mr
Hussein to be turned over, despite the reservations of the military
commanders in Baghdad.
One official said that Ms Rice was supported in that view by
Stephen J. Hadley, Mr Bushs national security adviser.
It literally came down to the Iraqis interpreting their law, and
our looking at their law and interpreting it differently, the
official said.
Finally, it was decided we are not the court of last appeal for
Iraqi law here. The president of their country says it meets their
procedures. We are not going to be their legal nannies.
Mr Khalilzad had suggested that the Iraqis get a written ruling
approving the execution from Midhat al-Mahmoud, the chief judge of
Iraqs Supreme Judicial Council; Mr. Mahmoud refused.
Then, the Iraqis played their trump card: a call to high-ranking
Shiite clerics in the holy city of Najaf, asking for approval from
the marjaiya, the supreme authority in Iraqi Shiism. When his
officials reported that they had it, Mr. Maliki signed a letter
authorising the hanging. It was 11:45 pm.
The Americans suggested that foreign reporters be invited to the
hanging, along with UN observers. American commanders feared the
concern for procedure might be swept away by the urge for
revenge.
Anybody whos been involved in a firefight will tell you theres a
moment when rage takes over, one American official said.
The Iraqis dismissed the idea of outside observers, and assembled
an execution party of 14 Shiite officials and a Sunni cleric
invited to help Mr Hussein with his prayers.
The X-Hour Sequence
At Camp Cropper, the X-hour sequence was running for a second
night. Helicopters were positioned. Special security measures went
into effect along the flight path.
The Americans dispatched sniffer dogs along the route of Mr
Husseins final steps and into the execution chamber, the only time
any American set foot there.
Before he left the camp, Mr Hussein bade farewell to American
soldiers who guarded him during the latter stages of his 1,110 days
in solitary confinement.
There, and again after the helicopter carrying him landed at 5:15
am at Camp Justice, the American military post in the Kadhimiya
district of northern Baghdad that encloses the Istikhbarat prison,
the former dictator went man to man, thanking each of the Americans
for looking after him.
At 5:21 am, he was led into the prison, a forbidding, four-story
concrete building that previously housed the headquarters of Mr
Husseins military intelligence agency, and now serves as a base
for an Iraqi Army brigade.
The Americans took him to a holding room, and exchanged papers
formalizing the handover with the prison governor.
At that point, he was dignified, Maj Gen William B. Caldwell IV,
the American commands chief spokesman, said at a briefing
later.
He said farewell to his interpreter. He thanked the military
police squad, the lieutenant who was the squad leader, the medical
doctor we had present, the American colonel who was on site.
He added, with emphasis, And then we had absolutely nothing to do
with any of the procedures or any of control mechanisms or anything
from that point forward.
At 5:30 am, the Iraqis took over. An American official who watched
the handover said Mr Husseins demeanor changed in the Iraqi
prison when the Iraqi governor assumed control of him. Mr Hussein
had long since told his American captors that he trusted them, but
not the Iraqis.
He was still dignified, but he was scornful, the American
official said.
Mr Rubaie, the security adviser, said that when Mr Hussein stepped
into the execution block, an ill-lighted concrete structure behind
the main prison building that witnessed thousands of hangings under
Mr Hussein, he seemed composed.
He made some joking remarks, he said. He said to me, Dont be
afraid, as if I was going to be hanged. I didnt reply, but one of
the guards shouted, You did bad things to Iraq. And he said, I
made this backward country into an advanced and prosperous
nation.
After that, the story is taken up by the illicit cellphone video
that has caused an uproar among Iraqi Sunnis and across the world,
showing Mr Hussein erect on the gallows in his black overcoat and
gray beard, staring ahead, and answering back, as the taunts flow
from the Shiites gathered in front of the platform.
Mr Hussein, praying, got halfway through the most sacred of Muslim
prayers. There is no God but God, and Muhammad.... The trapdoor
clanged open. It was 6:10 am.
Securing the body
Before 7 am, helicopters ferried Iraqi officials back to the Green
Zone, along with Mr Husseins body.
For nearly 17 hours, Mr. Maliki and his officials remained locked
in a dispute with Sunni officials and leaders of Mr Husseins Albu
Nasir tribe, with Mr Malikis officials refusing to release the
body, saying they wanted no shrine to him.
Throughout, the body, in a white shroud, remained inside the
ambulance in the parking lot behind Mr. Malikis office.
For the last time, the Americans intervened, flying a delegation
from Mr Husseins hometown of Tikrit to Baghdad, and returning them
110 miles north again after Mr Maliki, at close to midnight, agreed
to let the body go.
It was transferred to a pine coffin, loaded onto the open back of a
police pickup, and driven back to Landing Zone Washington, the
Green Zone helipad.
Upset by events in the execution chamber, and concerned at
attracting any fresh anger from Iraqi Sunnis, the Americans ordered
their troops not to touch Mr Husseins body after the execution,
even as it was loaded and unloaded from their helicopters.
This left Iraqi officials to unload the stretcher carrying the body
when the execution party returned to the Green Zone from the
prison. Mr Rubaie, the security adviser, said he helped carry the
stretcher bearing the corpse from the helicopter to a waiting
ambulance.
We werent walking, we were jogging to the ambulance, he said.
This was a chapter we wanted to get done and finished with. We
just wanted it to be over.
This article was reported by John F. Burns, James Glanz, Sabrina
Tavernise and Marc Santora and written by Mr. Burns.