EGYPT: Members of Egypt's Lawyers' Syndicate hold memorial service for former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein

Members of Egypt's Lawyers' Syndicate held a memorial service for former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Cairo on Wednesday (January 3) to condemn his execution on the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha. The service, which was held at the Syndicate headquarters in downtown Cairo, was overseen by members of the Egyptian opposition who condemned both the United States, Iran and Israel as being complicit in Saddam Hussein's execution. The timing of the hanging of Hussein has caused widespread anger in the Arab and Muslim worlds. At Wednesday's service, independent member of parliament Mustafa Bakri, who is also the Editor in Chief of Al-Osboa Newspaper, pointed the finger at Shiite Iran. "This is a sectarian and ethnic war against the Sunni and every Muslim in all the land of Iraq. The Iranians want a sectarian war. They want a new Persian state," he said. Bakri said those attending the service wanted to convey a message of defiance to Hussein's executioners. "We want to send a message to the Iraqi resistance and the Arab people and to the whole world - we say to them we consider Saddam Hussein a martyr, he lived as a hero and died like a man. And what he did was defend his country and his land, and he was executed even though he was a prisoner of war. And this requires us to put George Bush and Maliki and the Iranians and the Israelis on trial," he said Outrage over the execution has been heightened by an unofficial video of the hanging, apparently filmed on a mobile phone, showing Shi'ite officials mocking Saddam just before he was hanged. The video has inflamed sectarian passions in a country that is already being torn asunder by sectarian violence. The sectarian rift in Iraq has increased fears in the Arab world, which is 90 percent Sunni, of the influence of Shia Iran in Iraq and the region. At today's service in Cairo, capital of the largest Arab Sunni-majority state, organisers and members of the syndicate greeted well wishers, including former members of the Iraqi regime. One of those greeting attendees was prominent Islamist lawyer Muntasir Al-Zayat, who said that the execution of Saddam on the morning of December 30, the first day of the feast of Eid al-Adha, was an insult to all Arabs and Muslims. "This is a insulting move, this is an intentional move to insult the Arab world and to break the will of the Arab nation. They announced his execution at 3am and they carried it out at 6am. At 630am the footage was on all the satellite channels. This is an intentional insult," he said. The Iraqi government has promised an investigation into how a witness at the hanging filmed it on a mobile phone and released the video to television stations and Web sites. Whilst in power Saddam Hussein's government was at frequent loggerheads with the Egyptian government, which is a close ally of the United States. Support for Hussein among ordinary Egyptians remains relatively strong, however, and his execution is being seen by many as a warning to other Arab leaders of their possible fate should they defy Washington. Iraq's former Ambassador to Egypt, Dr. Mohsen Khalil, also attended today's service at the Lawyers Syndicate, and called the former president's hanging an intentional political murder. "Of course we consider the execution of Saddam a political murder, planned on purpose and with the involvement of the American administration and the Iraqi government and agents and the encouragement of the Israelis and Iranians," he said. In hanging Saddam four days after the failure of an appeal despite U.S. concerns over a rapid execution, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has boosted his authority among his fractious Shi'ite allies but infuriated Sunnis already fearful of victorious Shi'ites. And whatever calculus was involved in determining the date of Hussein's demise, the execution has undoubtedly fed resentment of the United States and its allies in the Iraqi government within Sunni majority Arab states such as Egypt.

ITN Source | January 3, 2007

Tags:. .encouragement. .whatever. .sunnis. .boosted. .rapid