Iraqis execute Saddam for mass killings

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hanged in the predawn hours today for crimes against humanity in the mass murder of Shiite men and boys in the 1980s, Iraqi and American officials said.

Saddam, 69, was escorted from his U.S. military prison cell at Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport, and handed over to Iraqi officials. He was hanged at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neigborhood of Kazimiyah, a place where numerous dissidents were executed during his reign.

Within hours of Saddam's death, bomb attacks killed 68 Iraqis in a fresh spasm of the sectarian violence that U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces so far have been unable to quell.

At his ranch in Crawford, Texas, President Bush said 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.

Yet, Bush said in a statement, "It 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. and Iraqi forces braced for a possible surge in violence by Saddam's backers and those frustrated that an Arab leader was killed by what they consider to be an American-controlled government. Iraqi officials canceled leave for their police and army. The Pentagon announced that U.S. troops were at a high state of readiness.

Saddam struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners. But as his final moments approached and masked executioners slipped a black cloth and noose around his neck, he grew calm.

In a final moment of defiance, he refused a hood to cover his eyes.

Officials said they videotaped the execution but wouldn't air it publicly.

Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.

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. It was the Dujail killings of which Saddam was convicted.

The post-execution 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.

Al-Arabiya satellite television reported that a delegation including the governor of Salahuddin Province and the head of Saddam's clan retrieved his body from Baghdad and took it for burial near the executed dictator's hometown of Tikrit. The broadcaster reported the burial would take place Sunday. The report could not immediately be verified.

The execution of a former head of state in his country after a trial by an internationally monitored tribunal is almost without precedent. But its political impact was undercut by what human-rights groups said was badly flawed procedure. Human Rights Watch charged that the trial didn't meet international standards of fairness and criticized the Iraqi government for actions that it said undermined the court's independence. It said the court was unfamiliar with the law.

The execution also didn't fully settle Iraqis' grievances against Saddam. The atrocity for which he was sentenced occurred a quarter-century ago and was of a far smaller dimension than his alleged crimes against Kurds in the late 1980s and against Shiites through the 1990s.

Throughout Friday evening, Iraqi state television broadcast footage of Saddam's atrocities, including photos of gassed babies and handcuffed men being tortured. Witnesses who had testified against Saddam and called for his death gathered in the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the government, to witness the execution. They were joined by a judge, a doctor and a cleric.

In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air.

Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Saddam struggled when taken from his cell but was composed in his last moments.

He said Saddam was clad completely in black, rather than prison garb.

Shortly before the execution, Saddam was asked if he wanted to say something, said al-Askari, who was present.

"No, I don't want to," al-Askari quoted Saddam as saying. Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric.

"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.' "

Reactions to Saddam's execution mirrored the nation's sectarian divide.

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.

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.

On Tuesday, an appeals court upheld Saddam's death sentence for the killings of 148 people after an attempt was made on his life in the northern Iraqi city of Dujail in 1982. The court said the former president should be hanged within 30 days. Since his capture by U.S. troops in December 2003, Saddam had legally been in Iraq's custody but remained under American watch at a military prison.

On Thursday, Saddam met with his two maternal half brothers and handed them personal messages, according to Iraqi officials. On Friday, his attorneys said, U.S. military officials asked that they take his personal belongings.

The Iraqi government, led by Shiite Muslims and northern Kurds, kept the impending execution a secret from its citizens, fearing that, even close to death, Saddam could cause chaos. His Sunni Arab loyalists, who view him as a symbol of their resistance, already had vowed to take revenge.

"It's like God asking you to choose between heaven and hell," said Thamer al-Musawi, 47, a slim, salt-and-pepper-haired barber in Baghdad's Karrada neighborhood, speaking before the execution. "If Saddam gets executed, you go to hell. If he doesn't, you go to heaven. I will choose hell just so Saddam is executed."

Saddam leaves behind a legacy of fear, poverty and a profound despair among Iraqis. At the same time, many Iraqis have expressed nostalgia for the security they enjoyed under Saddam, although they despised his rule.

Saddam's execution marks a shift in the fortunes of Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who formed the core of Iraq's bureaucracy under his rule and are struggling for a foothold in the country's political process. A central question is whether his death at the hands of a Shiite-led government will alienate more Sunnis and hinder efforts at national reconciliation.

Iraqi and U.S. officials also predicted an upsurge in violence, at least in the short term, as Saddam loyalists and former Baath party members seek to avenge his death. But it is unclear how influential they are today. The goals of insurgent groups that form the bulwark of the Sunni resistance are to oust the U.S.-led occupation and gain political power rather than fight for Saddam.

Some Iraqis said religious and sectarian symbolism guided the timing of the execution. Today is considered the beginning of Eid by Sunni Muslims, while Shiites start celebrating Sunday. Eid commemorates prophet Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son to God. It also marks the end of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, a trip millions of Muslims worldwide make each year.

Human-rights groups widely criticized Saddam's death sentence as unfair and his trial as marred by procedural flaws. There was failure to disclose key evidence to Saddam's attorneys, activists said.

The first presiding judge resigned. Three defense lawyers and a witness were assassinated. Outbursts by the second chief judge, Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman, undermined his impartiality, activists said.

Iraqi and U.S. officials, in turn, angrily declared that the Iraqi government did not interfere in the judicial process. Nevertheless, the nine-month trial further deepened Iraq's sectarian divide.

Under Iraq's constitution, President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents needed to ratify the decision of the appeals court. But until Saddam's final hours, there was confusion over whether a provision in the Iraqi High Tribunal statute could outweigh the constitutional requirement. Talabani, a Kurd, opposes the death penalty but in past cases has deputized a vice president to sign on his behalf. Early today, it was unclear whether the three men had signed off on the execution.

Late Friday, a U.S. judge refused to halt the hanging.

Until his death, Saddam exhibited the same defiance that was synonymous with his rule. During his trial, he mocked judges, hurled political invective and walked out of the court.

On Wednesday, a farewell letter posted on several Web sites in the name of Saddam declared that he was ready to die and urged Iraqis not to hate the people of the nations that had invaded Iraq, just their leaders. His attorneys said the letter was authentic and was written Nov. 5.

Saddam, who ordered executions of thousands of Iraqis, in his final hours became a cause célèbre for advocates against capital punishment. European leaders appealed to the Iraqi government not to impose the verdict. Cardinal Renato Martino, Pope Benedict XVI's top official on justice matters, told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that executing Saddam would punish "a crime with another crime."

Many Kurds were disappointed that Saddam was executed for the Dujail killings, widely viewed as a test case for the larger, and more significant, Anfal genocide trial. That trial began in August, and Saddam was scheduled to return to the courtroom Jan. 8.

Compiled from The Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers and The Associated Press.