posted December 30, 2006 01:35 AM              

Dozens gather at Michigan mosque to cheer, cry over dictator’s death
Image: Arab Americans celebrate Saddam Hussein's impending execution
Arab Americans celebrate in anticipation of the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein moments before his death was announced Friday in Dearborn, Mich.
View related photos
Bill Pugliano / Getty Images


Slide show
(FILES) This file picture dated 31 Decem

• Images of downfall
The path to descent of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

NBC Video: The Execution of Saddam
• Saddam Hussein executed
Dec. 29: Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was hanged for the killing, torture and other crimes against the Shiite population of the town of Dujail. MSNBC-TV's Milissa Rehberger and NBC's Richard Engel report.
• Bush: Saddam's death 'an important milestone'
• Obituary: Defiant dictator
• The downfall of a dictator
• Saddam's attorney: This was an unfair trial
• Dec. 2005: U.S. forces capture Saddam
• July 2003: Saddam's sons killed
• Saddam Hussein's rise to power
• 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait
• Iraq's war with Iran

FREE VIDEO

• A year of tumult
Take a look back at the defining moments from Iraq in 2006.

MSNBC.com
NBC NEWS EXCLUSIVE
Blogging Baghdad
Most Popular
• Most Viewed • Top Rated • Most E-mailed
• Saddam Hussein executed
• The oddest science stories of 2006
• Navy officer: Ship carrying 850 sinks off Java
• Ancient ice shelf breaks free in Canadian Arctic
• Iraqi Americans celebrate Saddam’s execution
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com
• Marines go extra mile to care for their own
• Mars rovers raring to go on new adventures
• Betty Ford, again putting on a brave face
• Duke lacrosse DA accused of ethics violations
• Cybercrooks deliver trouble
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com
• Saddam Hussein executed
• Ancient ice shelf breaks free in Canadian Arctic
• Navy officer: Ship carrying 850 sinks off Java
• Australia-bound tourist ends up in Montana
• A Chance to Honor Our Best Ambassadors
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com
Updated: 1 hour, 40 minutes ago

DEARBORN, Mich. - Dozens of Iraqi-Americans gathered late Friday at a Detroit-area mosque to celebrate reports that Saddam Hussein had been executed, cheering and crying as drivers honked horns in jubilation.

Dave Alwatan wore an Iraqi flag around his shoulders and flashed a peace sign to everyone he passed at the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center in this suburb of Detroit, a city that has one of the nation's largest concentrations of people with roots in the Middle East.

"Peace," he said, grinning and laughing. "Now there will be peace for my family."
Story continues below ↓ advertisement
Click here!

Alwatan, 32, said Saddam's forces tortured and killed relatives that were left behind when Alwatan left Iraq in 1991.

A crowd of more than 150 men gathered in anticipation of the former Iraqi dictator's execution, singing and dancing and chanting "Now there's peace, Saddam is dead" in English and Arabic.

The center's director, Imam Husham Al-Husainy, said members prayed for Saddam's death. Outside, traffic slowed as people drove in circles around the mosque, honking horns.

‘The gift of our New Year’
"This is our celebration of the death of Saddam," Al-Husainy said while standing on top of a car following reports by Iraqi state-run television that Saddam had been hanged. "The gift of our New Year is the murder of Saddam Hussein."

Meanwhile, some local Arab-American leaders warned that Saddam's execution would increase violence in Iraq.

Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News and chairman of several Arab-American groups, said the former dictator's death sentence was one more casualty in a war that has killed thousands. He said it will not end the power struggle among Iraqi religious groups.

"The execution might bring some amusement and accomplishment to the Bush administration, but it will not help the Iraqi people," Siblani said. "The problem we're facing in Iraq is going to multiply."

‘It's not going to bring back my family members’
Rauf Naqishbendi, 53, an Iraqi Kurd who moved to the U.S. in 1977, said he was pleased that Hussein was being executed, but lamented the loss of family members who he said were gassed by the dictator's henchman in 1988.

MORE SADDAM COVERAGE
• Images: Life and times of Saddam Hussein
• Discuss: What will the impact be?
• Analysis: After execution, outlook grim
• Brutality was Saddam's undoing
• NBC's Blogging Baghdad
• Hardblogger: Justice, if not closure
• U.S. military on 'high alert' for violence
• Newsweek: Saddam's rise and fall
"Psychologically, the execution is good news, and people will feel that justice has been served," said Naqishbendi, who lives a few miles south of San Francisco. "But the reality is that it's not going to bring back my family members who he killed."

The Detroit area's Iraqi community includes a group of Chaldean Christians, many of whom fled their homeland during Saddam's rule.

Joseph Kassab, executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America, based in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, said his humanitarian organization is against the taking of human life. But, he said, the world must reflect on Saddam's execution, "so we never again relinquish our destiny to tyrants like him."

Imad Hamad, director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, said the glee surrounding Saddam's death was laced with uncertainty about the future.

"The joy would have been complete if we were to see the healthy Iraq, the united Iraq, the safe Iraq," Hamad said. "Then everybody would be jumping up and down, celebrating."
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Shame on those who cheer for murder, sick disgusting *****