BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam
Hussein, the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled Iraq with a
remorseless brutality for a quarter-century, was taken to the
gallows and executed Saturday (approximately 6am), Iraqi
state-run television reported.
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.
Also hanged were Saddam's half-brother Barzan
Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief
justice of the Revolutionary Court. State-run Iraqiya
television news announcer said "criminal Saddam was
hanged to death and the execution started with criminal Saddam
then Barzan then Awad al-Bandar."
Mariam al-Rayes, a legal expert and a
former member of the Shiite bloc in parliament, told Iraqiya
television that the execution "was filmed and God willing
it will be shown. There was one camera present, and a doctor
was also present there."
Al-Rayes, an ally of Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki, did not attend the execution. She said Al-Maliki
did not attend but was represented by an aide.
The station earlier was airing national
songs after the first announcement and had a tag on the screen
that read "Saddam's execution marks the end of a dark
period of Iraq's history."
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 a town where assassins
tried to kill the dictator in 1982. 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.
Al-Maliki had rejected calls that Saddam
be spared, telling families of people killed during the
dictator's rule that would be an insult to the victims.
"Our respect for human rights
requires us to execute him, and there will be no review or
delay in carrying out the sentence," al-Maliki's office
quoted him as saying during a meeting with relatives before
the hanging.
The hanging of Saddam, who was ruthless
in ordering executions of his opponents, will keep other
Iraqis from pursuing justice against the ousted leader.
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."
"Oh, God, you know what Saddam has
done! He killed millions of Iraqis in prisons, in wars with
neighboring countries and he is responsible for mass graves.
Oh God, we ask you to take revenge on Saddam," said Sheik
Sadralddin al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
On Thursday, two half brothers visited
Saddam in his cell, a member of the former dictator's defense
team, Badee Izzat Aref, told The Associated Press by telephone
from the United Arab Emirates. He said the former dictator
handed them his personal belongings.
A senior official at the Iraqi defense
ministry said Saddam gave 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.
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.
The message called on Iraqis to put
aside the sectarian hatred that has bloodied their nation for
a year and voiced support for the Sunni Arab-dominated
insurgency against U.S.-led forces, saying: "Long live
jihad and the mujahedeen."
Saddam urged Iraqis to rely on God's
help in fighting "against the unjust nations" that
ousted his regime.
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.
During that war, as part of the wider
campaign against Kurds, the Iraqi military used chemical
weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq,
killing an estimated 5,000 civilians.
The economic troubles from the Iran war
led Saddam to invade Kuwait in the summer of 1990, seeking to
grab its oil wealth, but a U.S.-led coalition inflicted a
stinging defeat on the Iraq army and freed the Kuwaitis.
U.N. sanctions imposed over the Kuwait
invasion remained in place when Saddam failed to cooperate
fully in international efforts to ensure his programs for
creating weapons of mass destruction had been dismantled.
Iraqis, once among the region's most prosperous, were
impoverished.
The final blow came when U.S.-led troops
invaded in March 2003. Saddam's regime fell quickly, but
political, sectarian and criminal violence have created chaos
that has undermined efforts to rebuild Iraq's ruined economy.
While he wielded a heavy hand to
maintain control, Saddam also sought to win public support
with a personality cult that pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands
of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his
honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of
office buildings, schools, airports and shops and on Iraq's
currency.
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