Saddam Hussein executed
Deposed Iraqi dictator hanged for deaths of 148 Shiites in
1982
NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 3:01 a.m. ET Dec. 30, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Clutching a Quran and refusing a hood, Saddam
Hussein went to the gallows before sunrise Saturday, executed by
vengeful countrymen after a quarter-century of remorseless
brutality that killed countless thousands and led Iraq into
disastrous wars against the United States and Iran.
The death penalty was carried out following the guilty verdict in
Saddams trial for the killing of 148 Shiite men and boys from the
town of Dujail after militants tried to assassinate him there in
1982, during Iraqs war with Shiite Iran.
Witnesses to the execution told Richard Engel of NBC News that they
were cheering around the body of Saddam after the hanging three
years after the deposed president was hauled from a hole in the
ground by pursuing U.S. forces.
Asked if Saddam were dead, the official in the Iraqi prime
ministers office said, Yes, the body of Saddam Hussein is in
front of me.
Criminal Saddam was hanged to death, state-run Iraqiya television
said. The station played patriotic music and showed images of
national monuments and other landmarks.
In Baghdads Shiite enclave of Sadr City, people danced in the
streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate the former
dictator's 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.
NBC could hear cheers and celebrations in the background while
talking to an official in the prime ministers office.
This son of a bitch is lying under my feet.
I cant talk now
because of all the cheers! a witness said.
Three Iraqi officials who attended the execution said only he was
executed on Saturday, and that his half-brother and another former
regime official would hang after the weekend Islamic religious
holiday. The holiday ends Tuesday for Sunnis and Wednesday for
Shiites.
National security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run Iraqiya
TV that only Saddam was executed Saturday. We wanted him to be
executed on a special day, he said.
Munir Haddad, a judge on the appeals court that upheld Saddams
death sentence, and Sami al-Askari, political adviser to Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki, also told The AP that only Saddam was
executed. Iraqi state TV originally had reported that all three men
had been executed, Saddam followed by the other two.
Saddams final words
He said Saddam was clad completely in black, with a jacket,
trousers, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb.
Shortly before the execution, Saddams hat was removed and Saddam
was asked if he wanted to say something, al-Askari said.
No I dont 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.
Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters
in Baghdads Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. The
neighborhood is home to the Iraqi capitals most important Shiite
shine, the Imam Kazim shrine.
Al-Askari said the government had not decided what to do with
Saddams body.
Photographs and video footage were taken, al-Rubaie said.
He did not ask for anything. He was carrying a Quran and said: I
want this Quran to be given to this person, a man he called
Bander, he said. Al-Rubaie said he did not know who Bander
was.
Saddam was treated with respect when he was alive and after his
death, al-Rubaie said. Saddams execution was 100 percent Iraqi
and the American side did not interfere.
The station earlier was airing national songs after the first
announcement and had a tag on the screen that read Saddams
execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraqs history.
Al-Rubaie said that the other two men will be executed after the
Eid.
Eid al-Adha, Islam's most important religious festival, began at
dawn Saturday for Sunnis and will start Sunday for Iraqi
Shiites.
It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three
U.S. presidents. 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.
A new page of history
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
80 miles south of Baghdad.
We are looking for a new page of history despite the tragedy of
the past, said Saif Ibrahim, a 26-year-old Baghdad resident.
But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base
of Saddam, lamented his death.
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 the Saddam Big Mosque.
As a security precaution, police blocked the entrances to Tikrit
and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four
days.
Bush: Executed after receiving a fair trial
Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial
the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime,
President Bush said in a written statement released after the
execution by the White House.
Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in
Iraq, Bush continued, but it is 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.
Mariam al-Rayes, a legal expert and former member of parliament,
told Iraqiya television that the execution "was filmed and God
willing it will be shown. There was one camera present, and a
doctor was also present there." She did not attend.
The official witnesses to the execution gathered Friday in
Baghdads fortified Green Zone in final preparation for the
hanging, as state television broadcast footage of his regimes
atrocities.
The Pentagon said U.S. forces, always on high alert in Iraq, were
braced for any upsurge in violence from Sunni insurgents loyal to
Saddam.
A U.S. judge refused late Friday to stop the execution, rejecting a
last-minute court challenge by the former Iraqi president.
"Petitioner Hussein's application for immediate, temporary stay of
execution is denied," U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly
said in Washington after a hearing over the telephone with
attorneys.
An Iraqi appeals court upheld Saddams death sentence Tuesday for
the killing of 148 people who were detained and tortured after the
attempt on his life.
Prime Minister al-Maliki said in statements released Friday that
those who opposed the execution of Saddam were insulting the honor
of his victims. His office said he made the remarks in a meeting
with families of people who died during Saddams rule.
Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him,
al-Maliki said.
Gods gift to Iraqis
In his Friday sermon, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of
Najaf called Saddams execution Gods gift to Iraqis.
Oh, God, you know what Saddam has done! He killed millions of
Iraqis in prisons, in wars with neighboring countries and he is
responsible for mass graves. Oh God, we ask you to take revenge on
Saddam, said Sheik Sadralddin al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as SCIRI.
Rumors and reports swirled Friday over when the execution would
take place and whether U.S. forces had handed Saddam over to Iraqi
custody, presumably the last step before the execution.
Earlier reports said al-Maliki feared fueling religious tensions if
Saddam were executed during Eid.
An execution during Eid carries great symbolism. The feast marks
the sacrifice the prophet Abraham was prepared to make when God
ordered him to kill his son, and many Shiites could regard Saddams
death as a gift from God. Such symbolism could further anger
Sunnis, who are resentful of new Shiite power.
Najeeb al-Nueimi, a member of Saddams legal team, said U.S.
authorities were maintaining physical custody of Saddam until the
time of the execution to prevent him from being humiliated
beforehand. He said the Americans also want to prevent the
mutilation of his corpse, as has happened to other deposed Iraqi
leaders.
Saddam has been held at a U.S. base near Baghdad airport, but the
place of execution was kept secret.
Meeting with half-brothers
Saddam, who said in court he had no fear of dying, had a farewell
meeting with two of his half-brothers on Thursday, his lawyers
said, adding the fallen dictator was in high spirits and ready to
die a martyr.
Saddams conviction was hailed by Bush as a triumph for the
democracy he promised to foster in Iraq after the 2003
invasion.
International human rights groups criticized the year-long trial,
during which three defense lawyers were killed and a chief judge
resigned complaining of political interference.
Rights groups, along with the United Nations and many of the United
States Western allies, oppose capital punishment and have voiced
unease over the decision to put Saddam to death.
Saddam's lawyers issued a statement Friday calling on everybody to
do everything to stop this unfair execution. The statement also
said the former president had been transferred from U.S. custody,
though American and Iraqi officials later denied that.
The governments of Yemen and Libya made eleventh-hour appeals that
Saddam's life be spared.
Yemeni Prime Minister Abdul-Kader Bajammal wrote to the U.S. and
Iraqi presidents, warning in his letter to President Bush that
Saddam's execution would increase the sectarian violence in Iraq,
according to the official Yemeni news agency Saba.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi made an indirect appeal to save
Saddam, telling Al-Jazeera television that his trial was illegal
and that he should be retried by an international court.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16389128/