Saturday, December 30

Saddam Hussein Hanged

A truly evil man was this morning hanged by his own countrymen with a delicious sense of justice inside one of his former torture centres.


Three years after he was hauled from a hole in the ground by pursuing U.S. forces, Saddam Hussein was hanged at 03.00 hrs GMT Saturday under a sentence imposed by an Iraqi court, al-Hurra TV, al-Arabiya and Sky News TV have reportrd early this morning.
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The deposed president was found guilty of the killing of 148 members of the Shiite population in the town of Dujail after militants tried to assassinate him there in 1982, during Iraq's war with Shiite Iran. Sadam Hussein was also responsable for the murder of tens if not hundreds of thousands of his fellow countrymen during 20 years as the despotic ruler of Iraq.
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The official witnesses to his execution gathered on Friday in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone in final preparation for his hanging, as state television broadcast footage of his regime's atrocities.
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The Pentagon said that U.S. forces, always on high alert in Iraq (as indeed are British) were braced for any upsurge in violence from Sunni insurgents loyal to Saddam.

An Iraqi court upheld Saddam's death sentence on Tuesday for the killing of 148 people who were detained and tortured after the attempt on his life.

Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki said in statements released on Friday that those who opposed the execution of Saddam were insulting the honor of his victims. His office said that he made the remarks in a meeting with families of people who died during Saddam's 23 year rule.

"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 said.

In his Friday sermon, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

Earlier reports said al-Maliki feared fueling religious tensions if Saddam were executed during Eid al-Adha, a Muslim holiday that starts at sundown Saturday.

An execution during Eid carries great symbolism. The feast marks the sacrifice the prophet Abra.
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The British Government's anouncements following the execution have concentrated on the fact that the decision was that of the independent Government of Iraq. An interesting comment at this juncture is that the United Kingdom is not independent of the European Union and thus cannot impose (or carry out) a death sentence on any of its evil criminals.

3 comments:

Anastasia said...

I'm just glad its over... well, not completely over. We still need to get outa there, at some point. I just hope no one gets hurt as a result of his execution. The artical I read in the paper this morning certainly didn't make it seem like he would become a marder, but one can never tell.

But I have to say that, as a very political Conneticut Yankee, I look forward to reading more of your blog. Peace out.

Anonymous said...

Call me a bleeding heart liberal although Saddam Hussein was an evil man, I still think that his daughter should have been allowed to tell him goodbye. Also, they should give the family the body.I know that there are strong arguments why they shouldn't such as encouraging martydom and the fact that Saddam would not have been so generous, but the human part of me screams, he was still a husband and a father, let his family do with his body as they wish.....You see by allowing this, his executors are showing that they are much stronger men than Saddam ever was.

Anastasia said...

Wow. I didn't know those things. I read that his half brother got to go see him as well as a friend of his. That's horrable... is it the U.S. government in charge of it, or the Iraqi? (Though, of course, the Iraqi government is a puppet of the U.S., because we can't seem to mind our own buissiness.)

As I've said, I really just want to see our soldiers come home, before this turns out like Vietnam. And I'd like to see the bloodshed kept down to a minimum. Recently, the 5,000th American Soldier died... *sighs*