IRAQ: Saddam death angers many Arabs, foes feel cheated

Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging shortly before 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Saturday (December 30), U.S.-backed Iraqi television station Al Hurra and Arabic satellite channel Arabiya said. The former Iraqi president, ousted in April 2003 by a U.S.-led invasion, was convicted in November of crimes against humanity over the killings of 148 Shi'ite villagers from Dujail after a failed assassination bid in 1982. An appeals court upheld the death penalty on Tuesday (December 26) and the government rushed through the procedures to hang him by the end of the year and before the Eid al-Adha holiday that starts on Saturday, coinciding with the haj pilgrimage to Mecca. Residents of the sprawling Shi'ite slum of Sadr City took to the streets to celebrate the news of the execution of former president Saddam Hussein. Jubilant people drove through the streets of the city, honking the horns of their cars while others danced on the pavements. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called the execution a 'great victory' for Iraq and said he expected it would push the process of national reconciliation forward. "This is a day of great victory. And it was perhaps God's will, I don't know why this convergence occurred between the day of the Eid and this event (the execution), but what I can say is that this Eid, our happiness is truly doubled because the nightmare of oppression and poverty had spread to every Iraqi home, the victims of Saddam Hussein were to be found in every Iraqi home, and when the cause, when he who had assaulted their dignity, their daughters, and their wealth, has met his end, happiness will spread -- and has spread -- in the hearts of all of the widows and orphans of this country. And we believe that, on the political front, the reconciliation process will be propelled forward, for the better," al-Jaafari told a news conference. Residents of Dujail joined most Iraqis in their happiness for the news of the execution of the toppled president Saddam Hussein. Dujail is the town which Saddam was sentenced to death for the killing of 148 people in 1982, when a group of young men linked to the Shi'ite Dawa Party attempted to assassinate Saddam as his armoured motorcade passed through Dujail, a town about 60 km (35 miles) north of Baghdad. The man from from Dujail who testified in Saddam's trial over the deaths of 148 Shi'ite men from the town said that this day would be a great day in the history of Iraq. "This day, the day of executing Saddam is a great day in the history of Iraq. It (the day of execution) will be the most painful lesson for the terrorists and Takfiris. The souls of the martyrs will be safe in heaven and the soul of Saddam will be in hell," Ali al- Haidari said. Iraqis in the Shiite holy city of Najaf 180 kilometres south of Baghdad also took to the streets to celebrate the Saddam death sentence. However, residents in the impoverished village where Saddam Hussein was born seethed with anger at the hanging of the ousted president and said he was now a martyr in the fight against the U.S.-backed government. "I think that things will turn for the worse. It was a fast trial and the execution too was very fast. It should not be in that way and in such a hard situation that the country is living in," said an unidentified resident from Awja. Saddam, 69, rose from fatherless poverty in Awja to rule Iraq by fear for three decades before he was toppled by a U.S. invasion in 2003. He was hanged for crimes against humanity at dawn for the killing and torture of Shi'ites in the 1980s. During his grip on power, Saddam surrounded himself with relatives from Awja and from nearby Tikrit, creating a praetorian circle of aides from the Sunni Arab Albu Nasir tribe. Testament to Saddam's patronage, Awja still shows today some grand villas next to more humble dwellings. Meanwhile, in the holy city of Kerbala, residents expressed their extreme happiness with the news of the execution, celebrating in streets and chanting anti-Saddam slogans. Scarcely able to believe what they could see, most Iraqi Kurds said Saddam Hussein received poetic justice when he was hanged but some did not believe it to be true. "As a Kurd, I like to see Saddam executed because he used chemical weapons and killed five thousands Kurds and killed my brothers and relatives with chemical weapons. I'm happy about the execution," Raouf Nuri said. Popular reactions were fairly muted as Iraqis woke on the holiest day of the Muslim calendar to begin a week of religious holidays for Eid al-Adha. Unlike at previous times of tension, no curfew was imposed on Baghdad after the execution. At least 5,000 people, most of them women and children, were killed as a result of chemical poisoning on March 16, 1988. Halabja was bombarded more than twenty times by the then Iraqi regime's warplanes with chemical and cluster bombs. In the streets and alleys of Halabja, corpses piled up over one another. Many of the victims were children, who were playing in front of their houses on that fateful morning and were killed instantly by cyanide gases. Halabja, a Kurdistan town in the foothills of Hawraman Mountains, was the worst hit of at least 40 towns and villages during the Anfal ("The Spoils") a systematic genocidal campaign, when the Iraqi air force dropped bombs full of sarin, tabun, VX and mustard gas on the people of Kurdistan. Seventeen years after the attack, survivors are still haunted by the horrible memories of the day when the town was attacked. In the cemetery in Halabja there are 1,076 symbolic white headstones, one for each family that lost members in the attack.

ITN Source | January 1, 2007

Tags:. .humble. .testament. .slogans. .foes. .toppled