Joined: 11 Jan 2006 Posts: 6889 Location: Cyberspace
Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 4:24 am Post subject: Justice for Saddam
<b>Permanent link to <a href="http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2006/11/justice_for_sad.php">Justice for Saddam</a></b>
<b>Excerpt:</b> For his part in the massacre at Dujail:BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein was sentenced to hang by a U.S.-sponsored Iraqi court which found him guilty on Sunday of crimes against humanity. The ousted president, visibly shaken, shouted out "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest) and "Long live the nation!." Anyone surprised? We're not. Others blogging: HotAir, StoptheACLU...
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein, the iron-fisted dictator who ruled Iraq for nearly a quarter of a century, was found guilty of crimes against humanity Sunday and sentenced to death by hanging.
The so-called Butcher of Baghdad, who was president of Iraq from 1979 until he was deposed by Coalition forces in April 2003, was convicted of the 1982 killing of 148 Shiites in the city of Dujail.
The visibly shaken former leader shouted "God is great!" as Iraq's High Tribunal announced his sentence.
Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of the former Revolutionary Court, were sentenced to join Saddam on the gallows for the Dujail killings after an unsuccessful assassination attempt during a Saddam visit to the city 35 miles north of Baghdad.
Clashes immediately broke out in north Baghdad's heavily Sunni Azamiyah district where police were battling men with machine guns. At least seven mortar shells slammed to earth around the Abu Hanifa mosque, the holiest Sunni shrine in the capital. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Celebratory gunfire rang out elsewhere in Baghdad, and the people in Sadr City, the capital's Shiite slum, celebrated in the streets, calling out "Where are you Saddam? We want to fight you."
A jubilant crow of young men carried pictures of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and handed out candy to children.
In Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, 1,000 people defied the curfew and carried pictures of the city's favorite son through the streets.
Some declared the court a product of the U.S. "occupation forces" and decried the verdict.
"By our souls, by our blood we sacrifice for you Saddam" and "Saddam your name shakes America."
People were celebrating in the streets of Dujail, a Tigris River city of 84,000, as the verdict was read. They burned pictures of their former tormentor.
The United States Embassy immediately issued a statement under the name of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who said the verdicts "demonstrate the commitment of the Iraqi people to hold them (Saddam and his co-defendants) accountable."
"Although the Iraqis may face difficult days in the coming weeks, closing the book on Saddam and his regime is an opportunity to unite and build a better future," Khalilzad said.
After the verdict was read, a trembling Saddam yelled out, "Long live the people, and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!"
He initially refused Chief Judge Raouf Adbul-Rahman's order to rise to hear the verdict and sentence. Two bailiffs lifted Saddam to his feet, and he remained standing but turned to one guard, telling him to stop twisting his arm.
Former Vice President and Saddam deputy Taha Yassin Ramadan was sentence to life in prison.
Three defendants were sentenced to 15 years in prison for torture and premeditated murder. Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid and his son Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid were party officials Dujail, along with Ali Dayih Ali. They were believed responsible for the Dujail arrests.
Mohammed Azawi Ali, a former Dujail Baath Party official, was acquitted for lack of evidence and immediately freed.
Before the trial began, one of Saddam's lawyers, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, was ejected from the courtroom after handing the judge a memorandum in which he called the Saddam trial a "travesty."
Abdul-Rahman pointed to Clark and said in English, "Get out."
Saddam Hussein Convicted and Sentenced to Death
His Trial is a Milestone in the Iraqi People's Efforts to Replace the Rule of a Tyrant with the Rule of Law
By President George W. Bush, 11/5/2006 10:55:08 PM
On Sunday, November 5, 2006, Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced to death by the Iraqi High Tribunal for the massacres committed by his regime in the town of Dujayl. Saddam Hussein's trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law -- it's a major achievement for Iraq's young democracy and its constitutional government.
During Saddam Hussein's trial, the court received evidence from 130 witnesses. The man who once struck fear in the hearts of Iraqis had to listen to free Iraqis recount the acts of torture and murder that he ordered against their families and against them. Today, the victims of this regime have received a measure of the justice which many thought would never come.
Saddam Hussein will have an automatic right to appeal his sentence; he will continue to receive the due process and the legal rights that he denied the Iraqi people. Iraq has a lot of work ahead as it builds its society that delivers equal justice and protects all its citizens. Yet history will record today's judgment as an important achievement on the path to a free and just and unified society.
The United States is proud to stand with the Iraqi people. We will continue to support Iraq's unity government as it works to bring peace to its great country. We appreciate the determination and bravery of the Iraqi security forces, who are stepping forward to defend their free nation. And we give our thanks to the men and women of America's Armed Forces, who have sacrificed so much for the cause of freedom in Iraq -- and they've sacrificed for the security of the United States. Without their courage and skill, today's verdict would not have happened. On behalf of the American people, I thank every American who wears the uniform, I thank their families -- and I thank them for their service and continued sacrifice.
Appeals Court Upholds Saddam Hussein's Death Sentence
BAGHDAD, Iraq — An Iraqi appeals court has upheld the death sentence imposed on Saddam Hussein at his first trial, Iraq's national security adviser said Tuesday, and a tribunal official said the verdict will be carried out even if the presidency doesn't ratify it.
"The appeals court approved the verdict to hang Saddam," Mouwafak al-Rubaie told The Associated Press.
On Nov. 5, an Iraqi court sentenced Saddam to the gallows for the 1982 killings of 148 people from a Shiite Muslim town after an attempt on his life there.
The appeals court decision must be ratified by President Jalal Talabani and Iraq's two vice presidents. Talabani opposes the death penalty but has in the past deputized a vice president to sign an execution order on his behalf — a substitute that was legally accepted.
Once the decision is ratified, Saddam and other co-defendants sentenced to death at the trial would be hanged within 30 days.
Raed Juhi, a spokesman for the High Tribunal court that convicted Saddam, said the Iraqi judicial system would ensure that Saddam is executed even if Talabani and the two vice presidents do not ratify the decision.
"We'll implement the verdict by the power of the law," Juhi said without elaborating.
The appeals court was expected to announce its decision at a news conference later in the day.
An official on the High Tribunal court said the appeals court also upheld death sentences for Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujail residents.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said the appeals court concluded the sentence of life imprisonment given former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan was too lenient and returned his file to the High Tribunal. Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder in the Dujail case.
The official said the appeals court demanded the death penalty for Ramadan in a letter to the High Tribunal.
At his trial, Saddam argued that the Dujail residents who were killed had been found guilty in a legitimate Iraqi court for trying to assassinate him in 1982.
The televised was watched throughout Iraq and the Middle East as much for theater as for substance. Saddam was ejected from the courtroom repeatedly for political harangues, and his half brother, Ibrahim, once showed up in long underwear and sat with his back to the judges.
The nine-month trial inflamed Iraq's political divide, however, and three defense lawyers and a witness were murdered during the course of its 39 sessions.
Saddam is in the midst of a second trial charging him with genocide and other crimes during a 1987-88 military crackdown on ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq. An estimated 180,000 Kurds died during the operation.
The trial is in recess until Jan. 8. It is unclear how the appeals court ruling Tuesday might affect proceedings in the trial, which includes defendants who were not involved in the Dujail case.
Saddam was captured by U.S. soldiers while hiding with an unfired pistol in a hole in the ground near his home village north of Baghdad in December 2003, eight months after he fled the capital ahead of advancing American troops.
Saddam Calls on Iraqis Not to Hate Attackers of Their Country in Internet Letter
BAGHDAD, Iraq — In a letter posted on the Internet Wednesday in the name of Saddam Hussein, the former dictator called on Iraqis not to hate the invaders of their country.
The letter, which was authenticated by one of Saddam's lawyers, appeared to be what the fallen leader would have said if he had been given an opportunity to address the court on the day he was condemned to death last month.
"I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking," Saddam said in the letter published on a Website known to represent the Baath Party.
"I also call on you not to hate the people of the other countries that attacked us and who separated the people from those who govern them," Saddam wrote.
In this respect the letter contradicts a Baath Party statement published on the same Web site earlier Wednesday, in which the party threatened to retaliate against the United States if Saddam is executed.
In Amman, a member of Saddam Hussein's legal team, Issam Ghazzawi, confirmed to The Associated Press that the letter was authentic, saying it was written by Saddam on Nov. 5 — the day he was condemned to death for ordering the killing of 148 people, including children, who had been arrested after an attempt to assassinate him in the northern town of Dujail in 1982.
Ghazzawi said the letter was released on Tuesday — when an Iraqi appeal upheld the death sentence — and published on the Baath Party's Web site on Wednesday.
"You should know that among the aggressors, there are people who support your struggle against the invaders, and some of them volunteered for the legal defense of prisoners, including Saddam Hussein," Saddam wrote in a clear reference to the U.S. attorney Ramsay Clark, who joined his defense team. "Others revealed the scandals of the aggressors and condemned them.
"Some of these people wept profusely when they said goodbye to me," Saddam wrote.
The deposed leader said he was writing the letter because his lawyers had told him that the court would give him an opportunity to say a final word.
"But that court and its chief judge did not give us the chance to say a word, and issued its verdict without explanation and read out the sentence — dictated by the invaders — without presenting the evidence," Saddam wrote.
"Dear faithful people," Saddam added, "I say goodbye to you, but I will be with the merciful God who helps those who take refuge in him and who will never disappoint any honest believer."
Earlier Wednesday, the same Web site published a statement in which the Baath threatened to attack the United States and its interests if Saddam is executed.
"The Baath and the resistance [fighters] are determined to retaliate, with all means and everywhere, to harm America and its interests if it commits this crime," the statement added, referring to the execution that the appeal court has just upheld.
The site is believed to be run from Yemen, where a number of exiled members of the Baath are based. The party was disbanded after U.S.-led forces overthrew Saddam in 2003.
AMMAN, Jordan — Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer implored world leaders on Thursday to prevent the United States from handing over the ousted leader to Iraqi authorities for execution.
Khalil al-Dulaimi argued that Saddam enjoys protection from his enemies as a "war prisoner."
"According to the international conventions it is forbidden to hand a prisoner of war to his adversary," the lawyer said.
"I urge all the international and legal organizations, the United Nations secretary-general, the Arab League and all the leaders of the world to rapidly prevent the American administration from handing the president to the Iraqi authorities, he told The Associated Press.
Iraq's highest court on Tuesday rejected Saddam's appeal against his conviction and death sentence for the killing of 148 people who were detained after an attempt to assassinate him in the northern Iraqi city of Dujail in 1982. The court said the former president should be hanged within 30 days.
An official close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that Saddam would remain in a U.S. military prison until he is handed over to Iraqi authorities on the day of his execution. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the media.
Saddam Hussein remained in U.S. custody as of Friday morning ahead of his pending execution.
A U.S. military official told FOX News the Iraqi government is "anxious to get Saddam's execution done" and it is likely to be carried out before the New Year — perhaps even within the next 24 hours.
According to the official, U.S. forces are now in the process of finalizing the former dictator's transfer to Iraqi custody. Several U.S. officials said they are not ruling out the possibility that Saddam will be put to death as early as Friday.
Khalil al-Dulaimi, Saddam's chief lawyer, told FOX News U.S. officials called him to pick up Saddam's personal effects. Iraqi officials reported Friday that the former Iraqi dictator was visited by two half brothers in his jail cell the day before.
Iraqi General Abdl Kareem Khalaf told FOX News emergency procedures have been implemented in the former dictator's Salahadin province, where Saddam's hometown of Tikrit is, as well as Diyala and Mosul provinces, which have Sunni majorities. The emergency measures include more Iraqi army and police forces and more checkpoints.
Despite the beefed up security, Khalaf said he had "not received the date of the execution yet."
Iraq's highest court on Tuesday rejected Saddam's appeal against his conviction and death sentence for the killing of 148 Shiites in the northern city of Dujail in 1982. The court said the former dictator should be hanged within 30 days.
On Thursday two half brothers visited Saddam, a member of Saddam's defense team said, citing another of Saddam's lawyers.
"Upon his request, his two half brothers ... were brought to him and spent some time in his cell," Badee Izzat Aref told The Associated Press in a telephone call from Dubai.
"Saddam handed his brothers his personal belongings," Aref said.
A senior commander at the Iraqi defense ministry also confirmed the meeting, and said that Saddam handed over his will to one of his half brothers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
A spokesman for the High Tribunal court that convicted Saddam denied that Saddam's relatives visited him.
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners. But as his final moments approached, he grew calm.
He clutched a Koran as he was led to the gallows, and in one final moment of defiance, refused to have a hood pulled over his head before facing the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power.
A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed."
"Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.
The footage showed the man identified as Saddam lying on a stretcher, covered in a white shroud. His neck and part of the shroud have what appear to be bloodstains. His eyes are closed.
In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. 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.
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.
The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 108.
President Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas that bringing Saddam to justice "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."
• U.S. Forces Brace For Violence in Iraq Post-Execution
He said that the execution marks the "end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops" and cautioned that Saddam's death will not halt the violence in Iraq.
Within hours of Saddam's execution, a bomb planted aboard a minibus exploded in a fish market south of Baghdad, killing 31 people. At least 58 others were wounded in the explosion in Kufa, a Shiite town 100 miles south of the Iraqi capital, said Issa Mohammed, director of the morgue in the neighboring town of Najaf.
Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he learned of Saddam's death.
"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.
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.
• Iraqi-Americans Cheer Saddam's Execution
Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets of Tikrit, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air, and calling for vengeance.
Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 people took to the streets protesting the execution of Saddam.
A couple hundred people also protested the execution just outside the Anbar capital of Ramadi, and more than 2,000 people demonstrated in Adwar, the village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by U.S. troops hiding in an underground bunker.
In a statement, Saddam's lawyers said that in the aftermath of his death, "the world will know that Saddam Hussein lived honestly, died honestly, and maintained his principles."
"He did not lie when he declared his trial null," they said.
Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were not hanged along with their former leader as originally planned. Officials wanted to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone.
"We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run al-Iraqiya television.
Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told The Associated Press that Saddam initially resisted when he was taken by Iraqi guards but was composed in his final moments.
He said Saddam was clad in a black suit, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb. His hat was removed and his hands tied shortly before the noose was slipped around his neck.
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."'
Iraqi state television showed footage of guards in ski masks placing a noose around Saddam's neck. Saddam appeared calm as he stood on the metal framework of the gallows. The footage cuts off just before the execution.
Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. During his regime, Saddam had numerous dissidents executed in the facility, located in a neighborhood that is home to the Iraqi capital's most important Shiite shine — the Imam Kazim shrine.
Al-Askari said the government had not decided what to do with Saddam's body.
The Iraqi prime minister's office released a statement that said Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people.
"We strongly reject considering Saddam as a representative of any sect in Iraq because the tyrant only represented his evil soul," the statement said. "The door is still open for those whose hands are not tainted with the blood of innocent people to take part in the political process and work on rebuilding Iraq."
The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.
A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.
U.S. troops cheered as news of Saddam's execution appeared on television at the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in eastern Baghdad. But some soldiers expressed doubt that Saddam's death would be a significant turning point for Iraq.
"First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then when there were none, it was that we had to find Saddam. We did that, but then it was that we had to put him on trial," said Spc. Thomas Sheck, 25, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "So now, what will be the next story they tell us to keep us over here?"
At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.
Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds. Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."
In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.
One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings.
Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.
"This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country."
Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.
Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.
In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.
Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy.
When the U.S. invaded in 2003, Iraqis had been transformed from among the region's most prosperous people to some of its most impoverished.
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein's trial for the killing of 180,000 Kurds in the 1980s resumed Monday with the late dictator's seat empty, nine days after he went to the gallows. The court's first order of business was to drop all charges against Saddam.
Six co-defendants still face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in a military campaign code-named Operation Anfal during the 1980-88 Iraq- Iran war.
Shortly after the court reconvened Monday, a bailiff called out the names of the accused and the six men walked silently into the courtroom one after another.
Chief Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa said the court decided to stop all legal action against the former president, since "the death of defendant Saddam was confirmed."
Saddam was sentenced to death for the killing of 148 Shiites and hanged on Dec. 30 in a chaotic execution that has drawn global criticism for the Shiite-dominated government.
All seven defendants in the Anfal case, including Saddam, had pleaded innocent to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Saddam and one other man also pleaded innocent to the additional charge of genocide.
The six remaining defendants — all senior members of Saddam's ousted regime — include his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his alleged use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds.
The other defendants are former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim al-Tai, who was the commander of Task Force Anfal and head of the Iraqi army 1st Corps; Sabir al-Douri, Saddam's military intelligence chief; Taher Tawfiq al-Ani, former governor of Mosul and head of the Northern Affairs Committee; Hussein Rashid Mohammed, former deputy director of operations for the Iraqi Armed Forces and Farhan Mutlaq Saleh, former head of military intelligence's eastern regional office.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
