posted November 05, 2006 06:33 PM
Saddam Hussein Sentenced to Death for 1982 Killings
Now let's get Bush and his crew tried for all the murders they've committed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
By Robin Stringer
Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging today for his role in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims in the northern Iraqi village of Dujail following an attempt on his life there in 1982.
``Long live the people, down with the traitors,'' Hussein, 69, shouted as the verdict was read out. ``God is great. You are the servants of the occupiers. Long live Iraq.'' Dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, he held a copy of the Koran in his left hand. ``Don't push me, boy,'' he barked at a court guard as the judge ordered him to be led out.
Hussein was convicted of crimes against humanity including premeditated murder, torture and forced deportation. Chief Judge Raouf Rasheed Abdul-Rahman read out the sentence at midday in the Baghdad courthouse of the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court. Footage was aired by major international television networks.
``Justice has been handed out to him,'' Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said at a press conference. ``This is a response to the call of thousands of sons and sisters of those executed by Saddam.'' Hussein's rule is ``an era of the past, like the era of Mussolini and Hitler. The new Iraqi will be without mass graves, military coups and repression,'' said al-Maliki, a Shiite who leads a predominantly Shiite government.
`Major Achievement'
President George W. Bush said Hussein's conviction was a ``major achievement'' for the country's elected government and brought a measure of justice for Hussein's victims.
``Saddam Hussein's trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of the law,'' Bush said at the airport outside Waco, Texas, before departing for a series of campaign appearances for Republican congressional candidates.
The verdict comes two days before the U.S. mid-term elections. Bush needs to show progress in Iraq as 2,268 U.S. service members have been killed in action since the March 2003 invasion and rival Shiite and Sunni factions kill hundreds of civilians every week.
In a New York Times/CBS News poll on Nov. 2, 64 percent of U.S. voters said they disapproved of Republican Bush's handling of the war, a sentiment that threatens his party's control of Congress. Fifty-two percent said they will vote Democrat, with 34 percent opting for the Republican candidate in their area.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said it was ``just idiotic'' that some have suggested a link between elections and the conclusion of the trial. ``The conspiracy theorists are climbing out of the woodwork about trying to manipulate things.''
Automatic Appeal
``Although this trial was beset by irregularities, it was not the complete train wreck that many critics predicted,'' said Sonya Sceats of the international law program at Chatham House, a London-based international affairs institute. ``The real problem lies in the failure of the court to maintain its independence. As the security situation worsened, it appears political leaders increased pressure on the judges to conclude the trial quickly.''
The death sentence means an automatic appeal will start under Iraqi law. There is no time limit for the appeal, which may be made on the facts of the case or clauses of law. ``The Court of Appeal has no specific deadline and will take any time required,'' Iraqi Higher Criminal Court investigative judge Raad Jouhi said in a news conference aired on the Qatar-based Al- Jazeera television channel after the verdict was announced.
Hussein ``will continue to receive the due process and legal rights that he denied to the Iraqi people,'' Bush said in Waco.
If the verdict is upheld, under Iraqi law the execution must be carried out within 30 days.
Sunni Insurgency
Hussein's sentence will increase unrest and ``re-energize'' the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, Sceats said. It may be perceived as retribution by the U.S., Iraqi Shiites and Kurds on the leader whose ruthless oppression assured the supremacy of the minority Sunni population, she said.
Iraqi security forces canceled leave and imposed curfews in predominantly Sunni areas of Baghdad, the Diyala and Salaheddin provinces in anticipation of civil violence sparked by the verdict.
In Tikrit, Hussein's hometown about 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of Baghdad, hundreds of men and children protested in the street, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said on its Web site. Protesters shot at Iraqi security forces on sight, the PUK said on its Arabic-language Web-site. Footage aired on Al-Jazeera showed men firing automatic rifles into the air.
Shiite Celebrations
Footage aired on international television networks showed Shiite Muslims from Sadr City, the east Baghdad slum where there is no curfew, celebrating in the street. Many held up posters of anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Shiite militia the Mahdi Army. Al-Sadr's father, the senior Shiite cleric Muhammed Sadiq al-Sadr, was allegedly assassinated by agents of Hussein's government in 1999.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said ``the judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys in this case all showed courage in the face of intimidation.'' The trial's conclusion shows ``the rule of law will prevail in Iraq despite the difficult situation that the country now faces,'' Khalilzad said on the U.S. military's Web site. ``Closing the book on Saddam and his regime is an opportunity to unite and build a better future.''
The defendants ``faced justice and have been held to account for their crimes,'' U.K. Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said in a statement posted on the Foreign Office Web site. ``It is right that those accused of such crimes against the Iraqi people should face Iraqi justice.''
Unfair Trial
The human rights organization Amnesty International criticized the death sentence and said the trial was ``deeply flawed and unfair.'' The process was marred by ``serious flaws that call into question the capacity of the tribunal,'' Malcolm Stuart, director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa program, said in an e-mailed statement. ``In particular, political interference undermined the independence and impartiality of the court.''
Among Hussein's co-defendants, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, his half-brother and Iraq's intelligence chief at the time of the Dujail killings, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, who issued death sentences to Dujail residents as head of a Revolutionary Court, were also sentenced to death by hanging.
Prison Sentences
Former Baath party officials in the Dujail region Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid, his son Mizher Abdullah Ruwayyid, and Ali Dayih Ali were sentenced to 15 years in prison. Mohammed Azawi Ali, also a Baath party official in Dujail region, was acquitted due to a lack of evidence.
The majority decision by a panel of five judges closes a chaotic trial that Hussein's defense team repeatedly dismissed as a sham. Hussein said he was innocent. His lawyers argued the Dujail killings were legal, as they were in response to the attempt on Hussein's life. At the start of the trial in October 2005 Hussein told court, ``I preserve my constitutional rights as the president of Iraq. I do not recognize the body that has authorized you.''
A second trial of Hussein and six co-defendants began on Aug. 21. They stand accused of a military campaign called ``Operation Anfal'' against Kurdish guerrillas in the late 1980s which the prosecution alleges killed about 180,000 people, most of them civilians. This trial may not reach its conclusion.
``The killing of about 150 people doesn't compare to the Anfal or Halabja,'' Chatham House's Sceats said, referring to a 1988 chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja about 160 miles north of Bagdad that killed at least 5,000 people. ``Anything which stops at least a proper hearing of at least a number further cases will be a sorry story for history and for the people of Iraq.''
Violence
Defense lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi warned on Oct. 29 that a guilty verdict would escalate violence in Iraq. ``This decision will set the country ablaze again and plunge the entire region into the unknown,'' al-Dulaimi said in an open letter to U.S. President Bush.
Three defense lawyers were murdered during the trial, one of them, Saadoun al-Janabi, was kidnapped on Oct. 20, 2005, one day after the trial began. He was found shot dead a day later.
Hussein took control of Iraq's Baath party in 1979 and immediately set about executing hundreds of political and military officials in purges. In 1980, he began an eight-year war against neighboring Iran in which hundreds of thousands of people died on both sides. The war crippled Iraq economically.
Iron Rule
The ousted leader held Iraq, a country divided across religious, ethnic and tribal lines, together by iron rule. His secret police, the mukhabarat in Arabic, tortured and executed dissenters.
In August 1990, Iraq invaded southern neighbor Kuwait. The underpaid and underfed Iraqi army was pushed out after Operation Desert Storm by a U.S.-led coalition.
Hussein fled Baghdad when U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003. He was found by a U.S. patrol in a bunker in Adwar, a village south of Tikrit in December 2003.
The Iraqi Governing Council established the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court with the permission of U.S. envoy Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority on Dec. 13, 2003, three days before Hussein's capture.
To contact the reporter on this story: Robin Stringer in London at
Last Updated: November 5, 2006 15:31 EST
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aeyQhYzrCLE0&refer=home
Lindaland
UBBFriend: Email This Page to Someone! 
posted November 05, 2006 06:33 PM
posted November 05, 2006 06:36 PM
posted November 05, 2006 06:45 PM
you crack me up...
Every individual is reponsible for his or her own self.
