WORLD / Middle East

Saddam sentenced to hang for Shiite killings

(Agencies)
Updated: 2006-11-05 16:56

In this photo, former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is seen as he is
questioned by Chief Investigative Judge Raid Juhi, not seen, Aug. 23,
2005 at an unknown location. Saddam was sentenced to hang on Sunday. [AP]

BAGHDAD - Iraq's High Tribunal on Sunday found Saddam Hussein guilty of
crimes against humanity and sentenced him to hang, as the visibly shaken
former leader shouted "God is great!"

His 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.

After the verdict was read, a trembling Saddam yelled out, "Life for the
glorious nation, and death to its enemies!"

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He initially refused Chief Judge Raouf Adbul-Rahman's order to rise. Two
bailiffs lifted Saddam to his feet and he remained standing through the
sentencing.

As the proceedings finished, clashes broke out between police and gunmen
in north Baghdad's Azamiyah district, which is dominated by hardliners
from among Saddam's fellow Sunni sect. In contrast, celebratory gunfire
rang out in many other parts of the city.

The verdict was immediately condemned by the head of the second largest
Sunni bloc in parliament, who predicted it would spark even greater
bloodshed between Sunnis and the country's majority Shiites, who were
heavily persecuted under Saddam's more-than two decades of authoritarian
rule but now largely control the government and security forces.

"It was not wise and the government, not the court, has gone to the
extreme with issuing this sentence, even in advance," Salih al-Mutlaq
told the al-Arabiya satellite television station.

"This government will be responsible for the consequences, with the
deaths of hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands, whose blood
will be shed," al-Mutlaq said.

Saddam and his seven co-defendants had been tried by the Iraqi High
Tribunal over a wave of revenge killings carried out in the city of
Dujail following a 1982 assassination attempt on the former dictator.

Saddam faces additional charges in a separate case over an alleged
massacre of Kurdish civilians. It wasn't clear when a verdict would be
announced in that other case, or when Saddam's sentence would be carried
out.

Before the trial began, one of Saddam's lawyers, former US Attorney
General Ramsey Clark, was ejected from the courtroom after handing the
judge a memorandum in which he called the Saddam trial a travesty.

Judge Raouf Abdul-Rahman pointed to Clark and said in English, "Get out."

Guarding against violence, Baghdad was placed under a total curfew, with
shops shuttered and pedestrians and vehicles almost completely absent
from the streets of the city of six million people. Iraqi security forces
and US troops mounted additional patrols, but no major incidents had been
reported.

"There is close cooperation between Iraqi and coalition forces in
maintaining the curfew," said police Maj. Mahir Hamad Mousa of the
al-Khansa station in Baghdad's Jadeeda district ."We have fully prepared
for this duty," he said.

The guilty verdict for Saddam is expected to enrage hard-liners among
Saddam's fellow Sunnis, who made up the bulk of the former ruling class.
The country's majority Shiites, who were persecuted under the former
leader but now largely control the government, will likely view the
outcome as a cause of celebration.

Even with the verdict imminent, Saddam's lawyers and some Sunni
politicians had called for the court proceedings to be suspended.

"It has become clear to the Iraqi people and the whole world that this
court is politicized 100 percent," Salih al-Mutlaq, head of the second
largest Sunni parliamentarian block, told the Doha-based al-Jazeera
satellite channel.

Al-Mutlaq accused the US and Iraqi governments of interfering with the
work of the court and said a verdict would further polarize Iraqi
society, already traumatized by sectarian violence between Shiites and
Sunnis.

"This verdict will be the last nail in the coffin of the national
reconciliation plan and the political process," al-Mutlaq said. "I call
upon Arab leaders and ... to interfere for the sake of Iraq's unity."

The head of another prominent Sunni group, Harith al-Dhari, said any
verdict should be delayed until after the departure of US forces, who
toppled Saddam following their March 2003 invasion of the country.

"If this court issues the verdict, I would consider it to be illegal,
illegitimate and political," al-Dhari told al-Arabiya, a satellite
television channel viewed throughout the Arab world.

Echoing those sentiments, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a hard-line
Sunni clerical group, demanded that Saddam's trial be postponed until
"the occupation leaves".

"I do believe that this process is politically motivated and not a
judicial one," Harith al-Dhari, the association's leader, told the Pan
Arab al-Arabiya satellite channel.

One of Saddam's lawyers, Najeeb al-Nu'aimi, said Saddam and his
co-defendants had not been given sufficient time to present their cases.

"The court is not neutral. It lacks legitimacy," said al-Nu-aimi, a
former justice minister of the gulf state of Qatar.

The curfew, which also covers two provinces neighboring Baghdad where
Sunni insurgents are battling US troops and the Iraqi government, was
only lightly observed in Baghdad's sprawling Shiite slum of Sadr City, a
stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia led by radical anti-American cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr.

Local police commander Col. Hassan Challoub said quick reaction teams
made up of the Iraqi police, army and the Interior Ministry commandos
units were patrolling the area.

"No incident and nothing abnormal is reported so far," Challoub said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called on Saturday Iraqis to accept
the verdict Saddam without violence, but in the next breath declared that
the former dictator must get "what he deserves" with the decision that
could send him to the gallows.

A Shiite who was forced into years of exile during Saddam's
Sunni-dominated rule, al-Maliki had called for Saddam to be sentenced to
death.

Saddam and the other seven defendants had been accused of accused of
arresting hundreds of people in the Dujail crackdown, including women and
children, and of torturing some to death, with 148 people killed in all.
Al-Maliki's Islamic Dawa party has claimed responsibility for organizing
the assassination attempt.

In the US, President George W. Bush's chief spokesman underscored on
Saturday that Saddam's trial was being conducted by an independent Iraqi
judiciary, what he called an important component of the country's
development.

"These are things that are absolutely vital to building a democracy that
will not only sustain itself, but have the faith and support of the
populace," said Tony Snow.

In advance of the verdict, vacationing soldiers were recalled to duty in
one of the heaviest security crackdowns in Baghdad since the bombing of
an important shrine in the city of Samarra in February that unleashed
rampant sectarian violence.

New checkpoints popped up on major roads, including within the heavily
fortified Green Zone that houses Iraqi government offices and the US and
British embassies. A heavy police presence and larger than normal numbers
of US troops patrolled the streets.

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