Posted by
Gabrielle Cusumano on Saturday, December 30, 2006 3:34:08 PM
"We heard his neck snap," Sami Al-Askari, a political ally of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, told the media after the execution."
Saddam Hussein Hanged
Arab News |
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BAGHDAD, 30 December 2006 - Ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn for crimes against humanity specifically for his involvement in the Dujail case in which he was charged with genocide. The hanging, which took place at a Justice Ministry facility in northern Baghdad, closes the book on legal proceedings against Saddam who was toppled by a U.S. invasion in 2003. Iraqi State television aired film of Saddam, looking composed and talking with the masked hangman as he placed the noose around his neck on the gallows. It did not show the death or the body.
According to an official witness the ousted president, who was bound but wore no blindfold, had said a brief prayer.
"We heard his neck snap," Sami Al-Askari, a political ally of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, told the media after the execution.
The prime minister called on Saddam's Sunni Baathist followers to end their insurgency. The state television showed him signing the order for a hanging whose swiftness following the rejection of an appeal has delighted Shi'ites who suffered under Saddam.
Arab News
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=90519&d=30&m=12&y=2006 |
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Saddam Hussein executed in Baghdad
30/12/2006 16h11
Saddam Hussein moments before being hanged
©AFP/Al Iraqyia TV
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Ousted Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein has been hanged inside one of his former torture centres Saturday in the final act of a brutal 30-year tragedy that left the stage strewn with tens of thousands of corpses.
Officials who witnessed the execution said the 69-year-old former strongman remained defiant to the last, railing against his Iranian and American enemies and praising the rebels who have pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.
A grainy video showing his corpse draped in a white shroud was shown on private television after the state network broadcast a clip of masked hangmen placing a noose around his neck, cutting away just before his execution Saturday.
In the hours after his death, car bombs exploded in the Shiite town of Kufa and a street in northern Baghdad, killing more than 50 people, as post-Saddam Iraq continued its headlong plunge into the abyss of civil strife.
Iraqi Shiites, persecuted during Saddam's 24-year rule, feted his demise, dancing and cracking off bursts of automatic fire, while Sunni extremists slammed the US-backed government for hanging their hero.
In the video footage, the ousted despot appeared calm, exchanging words with his burly, leather-jacketed executioners as they wrapped his neck first in black cloth then a thick hemp rope and steered him onto a metal platform.
Saddam was manoeuvred forward firmly but not aggressively by the guards wearing black balaclava-style hoods, the grey-bearded prisoner looking thin inside a dark overcoat over a pressed white shirt but no tie.
"He said he was not afraid of anyone," said Judge Moneer Haddad, a member of the panel of appeal court judges who had confirmed Saddam's conviction for crimes against humanity and who attended the pre-dawn execution.
"It was a terrifying scene. Saddam was in self-control. I was not expecting him to be like that," Haddad told AFP.
"One of the attendants asked him 'are you afraid?' He said 'I have never been afraid as long as I lived. I lived as a mujahedeen and expected death any moment,'" he described.
"We heard the cracks of his neck. It was a horrendous scene," he added. After the execution an ambulance took the body to the heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and US embassy, Haddad said.
With that Saddam -- the swaggering sadist who slaughtered Iraq's Kurdish minority, invaded Iran and Kuwait and fought two disastrous wars with the United States -- stepped off Iraq's political stage for good.
Images of Saddam Hussein being prepared for his execution. Duration 1:14
©Iraqiya TV, Biladi TV
National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said in a series of broadcast interviews that the late strongman's final minutes were lived in the same spirit as his grandstanding appearances in an Iraqi court.
"One thing I can't explain, I have never seen any repentance, never seen any remorse there," Rubaie told CNN.
Rubaie said officials and executioners had danced around the body afterwards. "This is a natural reaction. These people have lost loved ones."
Sami al-Askari, a Shiite lawmaker close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who also saw the hanging, said it had taken place in an old Saddam-era military intelligence headquarters in the Kadhimiyah district of northern Baghdad.
He said the location had symbolic value, because it had been a centre of torture and execution under Saddam.
Within hours, a car bomb exploded in a fish market in the central city of Kufa, killing at least 31 people, but it was not immediately clear whether the attack represented the first reprisal from his supporters.
Later, a triple car bombing ripped through a mixed area of northern Baghdad, adding another 15 corpses to the grim daily toll.
Iraqi police cheer
©AFP - Essam Al-Sudani
Saddam's and two co-accused -- his half brother and intelligence chief Barzan Hassan al-Tikriti and revolutionary court judge Awad Ahmed al-Bandar -- were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on November 5.
Officials said that the execution of Saddam's aides had been postponed until after the Eid al-Adha religious holiday, which ends on Thursday.
Over several months, the Iraqi High Tribunal heard how they oversaw a campaign of collective punishment against the Shiite village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, where Saddam escaped an assassination bid in 1982.
Dujail's orchards were torn up and 148 men and boys were executed after being dragged through Bandar's kangaroo court.
More than 20 years later, Saddam was overthrown by a US-led invasion and later put on trial by a new Shiite-led government. The trio's death sentences were confirmed by a panel of appeal court judges on December 26.
The hangings then became inevitable, with Maliki's government determined to avenge Saddam's brutal 24-year reign and to strike a blow against a violent Sunni insurgency that still honours his name.
"Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself," said US President George W. Bush.
Maliki urged Iraqis not to see the execution as an attack on one community or another.
Iraqis in the southern port city of Basra celebrate
©AFP - Essam Al-Sudani
"The door is still open for everyone whose hands are not stained with the blood of innocents to take part in the building of Iraq. New Iraq shall not be ruled by one party or sect," he declared.
But Saddam's end was vigorously denounced by Sunni Iraqis, who mourned in their hundreds in the area around his home town of Tikrit and the insurgent bastion of Samarra.
Human Rights Watch complained that Maliki's administration had pressured the judge to return guilty verdicts, and was quick to attack the execution.
"The test of a government's commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders. History will judge the deeply flawed Dujail trial and this execution harshly," said the watchdog's Richard Dicker.
All Credit Given To Agence France Presse
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/061230160938.39mzy7jv.html
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From REUTERS UK
Execution of a subdued Saddam was quick - witnesses
Sat Dec 30, 2006 11:02 AM GMT
By Mussab Al-Khairalla
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A subdued Saddam Hussein was led shackled into a hall early on Saturday in Baghdad, a noose was placed around his neck and a guard pulled a lever that swiftly ended his life and a chapter of Iraq's history.
Sami al-Askari, a prominent Shi'ite politician close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, witnessed the event and told Reuters the process of Saddam's execution lasted about 25 minutes but once he was dropped through a trap door his death was very quick.
"One of the guards pulled a lever and he dropped half a metre into a trap door. We heard his neck snap instantly and we even saw a small amount of blood around the rope," Askari told Reuters.
"They left him hanging for around 10 minutes before a doctor confirmed his death and they untied him and placed him in a white bodybag," he added.
State-funded television channel Iraqiya showed the final moments of Saddam's life but stopped short of broadcasting the actual hanging or his corpse.
The footage showed a group of guards dressed in civilian clothes and wearing ski masks helping Saddam up a small metal staircase where a cloth was put around his neck before stepping onto the trap door. A red metal barrier, like a witness box, surrounded the trap door in the low-ceilinged, grey concrete, cell-like room.
The hangman, wearing a beige leather jacket, placed the thick rope over Saddam's head and tightened the noose on the left side of his neck. The hangman exchanged a few words with Saddam, who nodded in return.
Saddam wore a black coat over a black V-neck jumper and a white shirt and had black trousers and black shoes. Askari said he was told to take off a woolly black hat before his execution.
EXECUTED AT DAWN
Another official witness confirmed Saddam died instantly.
"He seemed very calm. He did not tremble," said the official, adding Saddam, 69, recited the Muslim profession of faith before he died: "There is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet."
Askari said Saddam, executed for his role in the killing of 148 men and boys from the Shi'ite town of Dujail after a failed attempt on his life in 1982, was executed at 6:10 am (3:10 a.m. British Time) according to his watch at an Iraqi army base in Kadhimiya.
The base was the former headquarters of Saddam's military intelligence where many of his victims were tortured and executed in the same dark gallows. The northern Baghdad district is also home to one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines.
"After he entered the small hall, Saddam had a seat as a judge read him the details of the sentence. But as he saw the camera come in to record, he began shouting the same rubbish we have seen in court. Long live Palestine and other slogans," he said.
He said Saddam's hand-cuffs that tied his arms in front of his body when he came in were reversed when he was led to the noose with his arms tied behind his body.
Askari said about 15 people were present, including government ministers, members of parliament, relatives of victims and representatives from the special court and Justice Ministry. U.S. military and embassy officials declined to comment on whether any U.S. representative was present.
Askari said no cleric was present as Saddam had not requested one and that he had no final requests. Askari said those present remained silent during the execution, but congratulated each other after Saddam was confirmed dead.
An Iraqi television channel later showed footage of Saddam's body in a white shroud. The low-quality footage on Biladi, a Shi'ite-run channel, showed Saddam lying with his neck twisted at an awkward angle, with what appeared to be blood or a bruise on his left cheek.
The short clip appeared to have been filmed on a mobile phone or small camera by a visitor invited to view the corpse.
Jawad al-Zubaidi, a victim who testified at Saddam's trial and who was allowed to view the corpse during a private reception at Maliki's office, said: "When I saw the body in the coffin, I cried. I remembered my three brothers and my father who he had killed. I approached the body and told him: 'This is the well-deserved punishment of every tyrant',".
(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny)
All Credit Given To: Reuters UK
(Excerpt ) To Continue Go To:
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-12-30T110239Z_01_KHA021421_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-R3-RelatedNews-2
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Nothing about Saddam Huseein's Execution in The Yemen Times (yementimes.com)
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Nothing From the UN Secretary General on the Execution of Saddam Hussein
30 December 2006
http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp
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Nothing Written in the Riyadh Daily either.
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Saddam’s enemies rejoice, many Arabs angry
(Reuters)
30 December 2006
BEIRUT - Saddam Hussein’s enemies rejoiced, his supporters seethed with anger and many Arabs felt outraged at his hanging on the holiest day of the Muslim year.
Sympathisers with the former president painted him as the victim of a vengeful Iraqi trial sponsored by the United States. Some in Kuwait and non-Arab Iran complained that Saddam had not been brought to account for the wars he launched against them.
Leading Sunni Muslim Arab power Saudi Arabia criticised Iraq’s Shia leaders for executing Saddam, also a Sunni, during the Eid Al Adha and said his trial had been politicised.
“There is a feeling of surprise and disapproval that the verdict has been applied during the holy months and the first days of Eid Al Adha,” a presenter on the official al-Ikhbariya TV said after programming was broken to read a statement.
“Leaders of Islamic countries should show respect for this blessed occasion ... not demean it,” said the statement, which was attributed to official news agency SPA’s political analyst.
The drama of Saddam’s violent end on Saturday was brought into living rooms across the Arab world with television pictures of masked hangmen tightening the noose around his neck. Separate film of Saddam’s body in a white shroud also upset many viewers.
Many Arabs said his hanging for crimes against humanity was provocatively timed to coincide with Eid Al Adha and would worsen violence in Iraq.
“This is the worst Eid ever witnessed by Muslims. I had goosebumps when I saw the footage,” said Jordanian woman Rana Abdullah, 30, who works in the private sector.
Hesham Kassem, an Egyptian newspaper publisher and human rights activist, said airing the images was controversial, but added: “This man was one of the most brutal mass murderers in the history of mankind. He stands alongside Hitler and Stalin.”
But in the impoverished Iraqi village where Saddam was born, residents vowed revenge. “We will all become a bomb,” said one young man in Awja, 150 km (90 miles) north of Baghdad.
Libya, the only state to show solidarity with Saddam in his death, declared three days of mourning and cancelled public Eid celebrations. Flags on government buildings flew at half-mast.
While many Arab governments refrained from comment, a senior aide to Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called the execution “a tragic end to a sad phase in Iraq’s history”.
“We hope that the Iraqi people would focus on the future to be able to pass this stage, stop the violence and achieve reconciliation,” Hesham Youssef told Reuters in Cairo.
The government of Iraqi neighbour Jordan said it hoped the execution would not have “any negative repercussions”.
Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said Arabs wondered who most deserved to face trial: “Saddam Hussein, who preserved the unity of Iraq, ... or those who engulfed the country in this bloody civil war?”
No street unrest was reported in Arab capitals, where Muslims were preoccupied with the Eid al-Adha holiday, but thousands of Indians, mostly Muslims, staged anti-US protests.
Risk to US interests?
Tajeddine El Husseini, a Moroccan international economic law professor, said Saddam’s “symbolic sacrifice” on a religious day when Muslims slaughter animals would make things worse.
In Afghanistan, the first target before Iraq in the US-declared “war on terror”, a Taleban commander said Saddam’s demise would galvanise Muslim opposition to the United States.
“His death will boost the morale of Muslims. The jihad in Iraq will be intensified and attacks on invader forces will increase,” Mullah Obaidullah Akhund told Reuters by telephone.
News of Saddam’s death shocked Palestinians, many of whom had seen him as an Arab hero for his missile attacks on Israel during the 1991 Gulf War that ended Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait.
“The Americans wanted to tell all Arab leaders who are their servants that they are like Saddam, nothing but a sheep slaughtered on Eid,” said Abu Mohammad Salama at a Gaza mosque.
Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri said Saddam’s execution was a ”proof of the criminal and terrorist American policy and its war against all forces of resistance in the world”.
In Kuwait, where Saddam is reviled for his 1990 invasion, parliament speaker Jasim Mohammad al-Kharafi hailed the execution, saying it had brought the country “two Eids”.
But Ahmed al-Shatti, a Health Ministry official, said Saddam had not answered for the “atrocities” he committed in Kuwait.
In Shia non-Arab Iran, Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid Reza Asefi said the hanging of the man who led Iraq into a costly war with the Islamic Republic in the 1980s was a victory for Iraqis.
But Yousef Molaee, an Iranian international law expert, also took the view that the dawn execution was a failure for justice.
“Saddam’s crimes in the eight-year war against Iran, such as chemical bombardments, remained unanswered because of the hasty and unfair trial,” state news agency IRNA quoted him as saying.
In Mecca, Sunni Arab pilgrims voiced outrage that Iraqi authorities had executed Saddam on a major religious holiday
Khaleej Times
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2006/December/focusoniraq_December201.xml§ion=focusoniraq
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From: Sky News UK
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13559626,00.html
Saddam Body Flown Home
Updated: 19:40, Saturday December 30, 2006
The body of Saddam Hussein has been flown onboard a US plane to his hometown of Tikrit hours after the former Iraqi dictator was executed, a defence lawyer said.
Lebanese lawyer Bushra al-Khalil told the Reuters news agency the body was handed over to tribal leaders for burial in Tikrit.
Saddam was hanged on Saturday morning in Baghdad after being found guilty of committing crimes against humanity in what the US said was a fair and just trial.
His execution took place around 6am local time (3am GMT).
Extraordinary footage of Saddam walking to the gallows and having the rope noose put around his neck was released by the Iraqi government.
The video showed documents being checked before showing Saddam being led to the gallows by men wearing balaclavas.
The camera is then lowered to show a noose and a small trap door in the floor surrounded by red railings.
Saddam, 69, was shown silently looking down at the floor before he said a few words and stepped forward to have the noose placed around his neck.
No further footage of the execution was broadcast, though low-quality pictures did emerge later of Saddam's body wrapped in a white shroud.
Following his death, state-run Iraqiya television said: "Criminal Saddam was hanged to death", and played patriotic music, while showing images of national monuments and other landmarks.
The station also reported that Saddam's half-brother Barzan al Tikriti and Awad al Bander, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were hanged.
Pictures of Saddam's body were broadcast However, officials said that only Saddam was hanged and the other two would be executed after this weekend's Islamic religious holiday.
Saddam's death sentence was carried out in northern Baghdad following hours of confusion over whether he was to be executed or not.
US President George Bush called the execution an "important milestone" for Iraq.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Saddam had been held to account for some of his crimes.
She added: "The British Government does not support the use of the death penalty, in Iraq or anywhere else. We advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime.
"We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation."
Saddam was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on November 5 after a trial lasting more than a year.
He was found guilty of ordering the murder of 148 people in the village of Dujail following a failed assassination attempt against him in 1982.
The Iraqi government had made it clear it wanted the sentence carried out as quickly as possible, even though Saddam faced a series of other charges.
Saddam was captured in December 2003, nine months after a US-led coalition invaded Iraq.
His lawyers made a last-ditch legal bid in Washington DC to prevent him being handed over to Iraqi authorities for execution. However, the judge turned down the request.
Saddam's daughter Raghd, in Jordan, "is asking that his body be buried in Yemen temporarily until Iraq is liberated and it can be reburied in Iraq."
More on This Story: (All Credit Given To Sky News UK)
Also In Sky News Home
Those developments, so unwelcome to the Americans who so easily conquered this nation, showed that Hussein was also a unifying force whose painful grip held together Iraq's many ethnicities and sects. Now, three years after his fall, Iraq has descended further into chaos.
As Iraqis across the country were trying to process the scope of what had happened, early reactions mirrored the deep sectarian divide that has been driving much of that violence and threatens to pull the country apart.
"Today is the best day we have seen since the fall of Saddam's regime," said Ayad Jamal al-Deen, a moderate Shiite political leader. "The death of this man will help to release many Baathists from Saddam's mafia. The violence will be reduced."
But a Sunni tribal sheik expressed a thought typical of the hard-line Sunni minority, which has held tenaciously to the memory of being favored under Hussein.
"The execution of Saddam means that the flame of vengeance will be ignited and it will hurt the body of Iraq with unrecoverable wound," the sheik said.
As Hussein awaited the hangman, he was apparently unaware that the American military was already making plans to dispose of his personal effects.
Iraqi officials were vague to the end about when the execution would happen. "We will do it very soon," said Munir Haddad, a judge on the Iraqi High Tribunal who represented the body at the execution.
The entire proceeding was brief, efficient and largely lacking in ceremony. Four executioners, drawn from the ranks of the Iraqi police, wearing black ski-masks, shepherded him to where the thick rope resting on red railing at the ready.
After he refused the hood, he was given a black scarf to swath his neck, protecting it from being sliced open.
Other video footage showed the dead body of Hussein, draped in a white shroud. Lying on his back, his head turned unnaturally far to his right, he seemed to be vacantly gazing into the distance.
In the end, the hanging was carried out with such haste that an ad hoc air at times overshadowed the historical import.
Prime Minister Maliki was still conferring with American officials late Friday night to work out the timing and resolve key details, like what to do with Hussein's body, a Western official said.
But Maliki's comments on Friday to the families of people who were killed while Hussein ruled left no doubt about where the prime minister stood on the time frame of the execution.
"Anyone who rejects the execution of Saddam is undermining the martyrs of Iraq and their dignity," Maliki said. "Nobody can overrule the execution sentence issued against Saddam."
Without specifying a time, date or place, he said, "There is no review or delay in implementing the execution verdict against Saddam."
Esam al-Gazawi, another lawyer representing Hussein who is currently in Jordan, expressed the views of many by suggesting that the timing of the execution was determined by the highest levels of the American and Iraqi governments.
"No one knows when it's going to happen except God and President Bush," he said shortly before Hussein was executed.
Hussein spent his final hours in a dreary cell on an American base near the Baghdad airport, and there were indications that he was unaware that the end was drawing near.
Iraqi and American officials kept outsiders, including his legal team, from contacting him all day, according to Najib al-Nauimi, one of Hussein's lawyers, who was in Qatar.
But the legal team received a request late Friday asking for formal requests from people who could receive Hussein's effects, another of his lawyers said.
"I gave them a request that my colleagues and I are authorized to get Saddam's personal stuff," said the lawyer, Wadood Fawzi.
In Washington, a United States District Court rejected an emergency motion filed Friday afternoon by lawyers for Hussein seeking to halt the execution on the grounds that it would interfere with pending civil litigations against him. Judge Kathleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled shortly after 9 p.m. that her court did not have jurisdiction to intercede.
Hussein's trial and conviction have been mostly welcomed by the Iraqi Shiites and Kurds who suffered under his rule, but it has angered Sunni Muslims, helped to fuel a Sunni-led insurgency and done nothing to calm the increasingly chaotic sectarian violence here.
Iraqi officials said the execution would be filmed, both for the historical record and as proof for those who may doubt the word of both the Americans and Iraqis.
As of late Friday, some Iraqi officials remained engaged in a heated debate about how swiftly to carry out Hussein's death sentence.
An Iraqi official close to the negotiations expressed deep disappointment that, after years of forensic investigation, detailed litigation and careful deliberation, the process could be compromised in the final hours by politically driven haste.
"According to the law, no execution can be carried out during the holidays," said another official, "After all the hard work we have done, why would we break the law and ruin what we have built?"
The Muslim holiday of Id al-Adha begins Saturday for Sunnis and Sunday for Shiites, who now control the government.
Iraqi law seemed to indicate that executions were forbidden on the holiday.
But Judge Haddad was dismissive of those concerns, injecting some of the sectarian split that is pervading the country. "The official Id in Iraq is Sunday," he said.
As for Hussein's sect, he said, "Saddam is not Sunni. And he is not Shiite. He is not Muslim."
Gazawi, the lawyer, said he was told that Hussein had met with two half-brothers, who are also in custody, but no other relatives.
"His sons are dead, and his daughters are here in Amman," he said. Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed by American soldiers after the 2003 invasion.
After his government collapsed, Hussein went into hiding and was eventually found in a hide-out near his hometown of Tikrit.
Once in custody, there were three cases brought against Hussein for crimes against humanity.
The first case to begin hearings, and the simplest in terms of details, involved the executions of residents of Dujail after an attack on his motorcade there. Hussein was found guilty on Nov. 5 and sentenced to die by hanging. An appeals court upheld the ruling on Tuesday and said the sentence had to be carried out within 30 days.
A trial on the far more sweeping charges that he directed the killing of 50,000 Kurds in an organized ethnic-cleansing campaign is still under way and will continue despite Hussein's execution.
Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Khalid al-Ansary from Baghdad, Eric Lichtblau from Washington and Jeff Zeleny from Crawford, Tex.
Another Article: Gadhafi's Libya declares 3-day official mourning for Saddam
All Credit Given To The International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/30/africa/web.1230saddam.php?page=1
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Postscript
From Cox & Forkum
December 26, 2006
Old Acquaintance
From CNN: Iraqi appeals court upholds Hussein death sentence.
The Iraqi High Tribunal's appellate chamber on Tuesday upheld Saddam Hussein's death sentence in the Dujail massacre case, Judge Aref Shaheen announced.
Shaheen said the court's decision was the final word in the case.
The toppled Iraqi dictator's execution must take place before January 27, Shaheen said. Iraqi law requires a death sentence to be carried out within 30 days.
On November 5, Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging for his role in the 1982 killings of 148 people in Dujail, a mostly Shiite town north of Baghdad. Hussein's attorneys appealed, and the appellate chamber began reviewing the case December 5.
Hussein's chief defense attorney, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said he had heard about the decision, but said it came from "an illegitimate and unconstitutional court."
"We are not surprised by this crazy ruling," al-Dulaimi said.
The lawyer, speaking from Amman, Jordan, said three other members of the defense team met with Hussein on Tuesday before the decision was announced and described him as being in high spirits.
Under international law, most governments have the power to stay any executions, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said his government would not do so in Hussein's case.
The White House released a statement praising the court's decision.
"Today marks a milestone for the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law," said Scott Stanzel, deputy White House press secretary.
"We look forward to seeing the written judgment. Saddam has received due process and the legal rights that he denied the Iraqi peop
UPDATE I -- Dec. 27: From CNN: Baathists: 'Grave consequences' if Hussein's hanged.
The Baath Party, the political movement that ruled Iraq during the Saddam Hussein era, is warning there will be "grave consequences" if former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is executed.
Saying it would hold the United States responsible, a message appeared on al-basrah.net Tuesday that read: "The Baath and the resistance are determined to retaliate in all ways and all places that hurt America and its interests if it commits this crime."
If the execution is carried out, the largely Sunni-Arab Baathists said they also will retaliate against members of the Iraqi High Tribunal.
And they vowed a complete shut-down of peace negotiations between the Baathists and coalition forces.
The Baathists have been operating as part of the insurgency against the U.S. and its allies since Hussein's regime fell in 2003.
UPDATE II -- Dec. 29:
Looks like Old Man 2006 got to the lever first.
From CNN: Hussein executed, Iraqi TV stations report.
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been executed, according to two Arabic language media outlets.
Hussein was hanged before dawn on Saturday in Iraq, at about 6 a.m. (10 p.m. Friday ET), the U.S.-backed Al-Hurra television reported.
Al-Arabiya reported that Barzan Hassan, Hussein's half-brother, and Awad Bandar, former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were hanged after Hussein. All three were convicted of killings in the Iraqi town of Dujail nearly 25 years ago.
Earlier, Munir Haddad, a judge on the appeals court that upheld the former dictator's death sentence, and an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki each confirmed the paperwork needed for Hussein's execution had been prepared late Friday.
"All the procedures have been completed," Haddad said.
At the same time, a U.S. district judge refused a request to stay the execution.
Attorney Nicholas Gilman said in an application for a restraining order, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, that a stay would allow Hussein "to be informed of his rights and take whatever action he can and may wish to pursue."
Haddad had called Gilman's filing "rubbish," and said, "It will not delay carrying out the sentence," which he called "final."
Posted by Forkum at
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Gabrielle Cusumano