Saddam To Hang For War Crimes

Clashes, Celebrations As Former Iraqi President Is Sentenced To Death

(CBS/AP)  Iraq's High Tribunal on Sunday found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to hang for the 1982 killing of 148 Shiites in the city of Dujail. 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 shaken Saddam yelled out, "Life for the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!"

Some feared the verdicts could intensify Iraq's sectarian violence after a trial that stretched over nine months in 39 sessions and ended nearly 3 1/2 months ago.

Clashes immediately broke out in north Baghdad's heavily Sunni Azamiyah district where police were battling men with machine guns. At least seven mortar shells slammed to earth around the Abu Hanifa mosque, the holiest Sunni shrine in the capital. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Sunni political leader Salih al-Mutlaq condemned the court decision.

"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 told the al-Arabiya satellite television station.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Saddam Hussein's trial was fair, but won't comment on the verdict or death sentence for security reasons.

The White House applauded the verdict. President Bush called the verdict "a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law."

"It's a major achievement for Iraq's young democracy and its constitutional government," the president said at the airport before flying to Nebraska and Kansas on a campaign swing for Republican candidates two days before congressional elections.

"The man who once struck fear in the hearts of Iraqis had to listen to free Iraqis recount the acts of torture and murder that he ordered against their families and against them," Bush said in brief remarks.

Mr. Bush recognizes that extremists and other Saddam loyalists might react violently, but the president believes Iraqi leaders and American and Iraqi security forces can keep contain any outbreaks, presidential counselor Dan Bartlett said.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the verdict brought long deserved justice for Iraqis. But he said Iraq has descended into a civil war and that Iraqis "have traded a dictator for chaos" since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

Neither option is acceptable, he said, when U.S. troops who are caught in the middle.

During Sunday's hearing, Saddam initially refused the chief judge's order to rise; two bailiffs lifted the ousted ruler to his feet and he remained standing through the sentencing.

Saddam and seven co-defendants were on trial for killing 148 Shiites in a wave of revenge in the city of Dujail following a 1982 assassination attempt.

Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim was also sentenced to hang. Former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan got life in prison for premeditated murder.

Three others were found guilty of murder and sentenced to 15 years behind bars. One, a Baath Party official, walked free because of insufficient evidence.

Celebratory gunfire rang out elsewhere in Baghdad, and the people in Sadr City, the capital's Shiite slum, celebrated in the streets, calling out, "Where are you, Saddam? We want to fight you."

A jubilant crowd of young men carried pictures of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and handed out candy to children.

But Saddam supporters rallied in his hometown of Tikrit. One thousand people defied the curfew and carried pictures of the city's favorite son through the streets, chanting "Saddam, we'll give our blood for you."

Al-Dulaimi, Saddam's lawyer, told the Associated Press his client called on Iraqis to reject sectarian violence and called on them to refrain from
taking revenge on U.S. invaders.

"His message to the Iraqi people was, 'Pardon and do not take revenge on the invading nations and their people'," al-Dulaimi said, quoting Saddam. "The president also asked his countrymen to 'unify in the face of sectarian strife."'

"Saddam Hussein's conviction and sentence to death by hanging for crimes against humanity are unlikely to bring the hoped-for national reconciliation in Iraq but it will bring some closure to the majority Shiite population who suffered under Hussein's dictatorship," said CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk, an international lawyer.

"The trial was plagued from the beginning, just over a year ago, by security problems and violence against lawyers, witnesses and judges, and the Tribunal was accused at times of being an occupation court and victors' justice, but the evidence presented was gripping and a tragic record of the methods and brutality of Saddam's rule," Falk added. "The Tribunal decision is unlikely to calm the sectarian violence that mires U.S. forces in Iraq, but it is a reminder that the divisions in Iraq are deep-set and pre-date coalition involvement in the region."

The United States Embassy issued a statement under the name of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who said the verdicts "demonstrate the commitment of the Iraqi people to hold them (Saddam and his co-defendants) accountable."

"Although the Iraqis may face difficult days in the coming weeks, closing the book on Saddam and his regime is an opportunity to unite and build a better future," Khalilzad said.

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 U.S. 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."

Clark had said earlier the way Saddam's trial was perceived would set important precidents in Iraq.

"And unless it is seen as absolutely fair and is absolutely fair in fact, it will irreconcilably divide the people of Iraq," he said.

Clark also said that the trial would never be fair unless the defense was protected. It was a prophetic warning: three defense lawyers were murdered as the trial progressed, along with a judge and a lawyer working for the court.

In the wake of the verdict and sentencing, 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 U.S. 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.

[nihadkamil]

It is a fair judgment. This killer (Saddam), killed thousands of Iraqies and Kuwaities. he turned Iraq from one of the richest countries to a poor one. As an Iraqi person,I'm so happy to see an end for this dictator. Death to Saddam, long live Iraq.
Montreal-Canada

[thgdriver]

batrhyme said "The same weapons have been widely used in Afghanistan against the people of one of the most primitive societies in the world".

I am not so sure, are they the same "primitive" people that ran the USSR out of their country?,

Are they the same "primitive" people that set up the "terrorist camps" in the first place?

They found out the hard way, we are not the USSR, we are not getting into any more (Democratic) "President Johnson" style Vietnams.

[batrhyme]

Mass Murder: Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq--a nation that clearly posed no immediate threat to the U.S. or its own neighbors in 2003--was the worst of war crimes, a "Crime against Peace" under the Nuremburg Charter, and a crime under US law because it was based upon lies, fraud and deception. It has led to the unnecessary and criminal deaths of nearly 2900 American troops, the maiming of another 25,000, and the deaths of as many as 650,000 innocent Iraqi civilians--largely at the hands of U.S. weapons. Many of those weapons, like the illegal white phosphorus and napalm bombs used in Fallujah and elsewhere, The thousands of tons of depleted uranium shells and bombs, the millions of rounds of anti-personnel bombs and shells, and the helicopter and fixed-wing gunships that spray wide areas indiscriminately with saturation fire, are the very "weapons of mass destruction" which we claimed we were going to war to prevent. The same weapons have been widely used in Afghanistan against the people of one of the most primitive societies in the world. These are massive crimes, and they won't stop until the Congress brings them to a halt--and calls the criminal in the White House who initiated them to account. (Remember, neither one of these wars is doing a thing to challenge or defend against terrorism.)

[thgdriver]

batrhyme

Is that so, where are the mass grave sites? Where are his two sons that rape and kill hundreds? How come Iraq does not look like Berlin or Tokyo did in 1945? When did Bush invade our neighbor Canada or Mexico to kill and rape?

[batrhyme]

George W Bush is next. Talk about war crimes? He's got Saddam beat by a crooked Texas mile.

[thgdriver]

bluestardad said.

"Saddam was told by the U. S. that America wanted no part in a Middle East war hearing that he took that as an American Green Light and subsequently he invaded Kuwait".

Where did you get that information? Are you making it up as you go or do you have proof this conversation took place?

Besides, he had "five months" to get back out of Kuwait, the UN resolution told him to get out. What the hel@ was he waiting for?

[bluestardad]

Saddam would have been our friend now and was given arms by America in the past. Prior to the first gulf war Saddam contacted the State Department and ask permission from the U. S. before he went into Kuwait to stop their slant drilling into his Oil Fields. Kuwait was starting drilling oil on their side of the border but slanted the drills under ground to reach the reserves under Iraqi soil. Saddam was told by the U. S. that America wanted no part in a Middle East war hearing that he took that as an American Green Light and subsequently he invaded Kuwait. This set a domino effect in motion that led us to where we are today with thousands of American deaths and billions of tax dollars spent, The Middle East and Iraq in Chaos and millions of Iraqi and Middle East civilian deaths. Now this leader that was our friend in the Middle East is going to be hanged.

[bmanther]

mh4cbs1 thanks for your comment. Bush is every bit as bad as hussain every was adn should be tried for crimes against humanity as well. Jail would be too good for him.

[bob_burd]

Funny....Saddam used to be brimming with confidence while he ruled, like no one on earth could touch him and the world was his oyster. Cruel, healthy and always smiling that murderous smile, giving death sentences out with impunity.

Now he is scrawny and gaunt, stressed out to the max, looks twenty years older and is obviously crapping his drawers, knowing what is going to happen to him. His phony ploy (before the announced verdict), asking Iraqis not to commit to violence was a complete farce, and right after his verdict was announced his was back in form, shaking and screaming for "death to his enemies." Trembling like a little sheep surrounded by wolves.

There is a Santa Claus after all, Virginia. This is so beautiful. A public execution would make the whole story perfect. Right before he swings from a rope the hangman should show him photos of his dead sons lying on a morgue slab, pulverized by the American forces. Even the bleeding heart whining of the European terrorist-appeasers is not going to save this scum from getting his just desserts.

Selah

[fredricksons]

So long Saddam. You gonna meet your money maker..his name is Satan. Remember, you owe him a thing or two..I think your job in hell will be working a slaughter house at a pig farm

[mh4cbs1]

So... When do Bush and Cheney go on trial for their War Crimes? Lying us into an Invasion of a Country that was NOT a threat, with 2,800 dead US troops, and tens of thousands maimed for life. A few hundred thousand Iraqis killed.

What will the jury say about Bush and Cheney's needless horrific death and destruction? Shouldn't they at least get a couple years in Jail for negligent homicide?

[thgdriver]

j-whitman

I sure won't miss all the mud slinging on both sides.

Most irritating thing at election time are all the little signs along the high ways and off ramps. I'll be glad when they are gone from my view.

[thgdriver]

I figured my last post about Bill C would send at least 5 or 6 out to get a rope for my neck. I Guess they are at the all night Wal-Mart for the rope now.

[j-whitman]

thgdriver,,, I'm tiered too,,, Glad this election is almost over,, looks like all the posters are asleep.

[tibu987]

Kailumego1........

I am afraid that you are right. What we, the U.S. has to look forward to with the situation in Iraq and the hanging of Hussein does not bode well for us.
Too bad.

[thgdriver]

I worked a 7 PM Saturday. to 7 AM Sunday shift. I am tired and Irritated, hence the double post, thanks for asking.

[j-whitman]

thgdriver,, how's it going tonight?

[thgdriver]

President Truman (Democrat) refused to authorize the use of a-bombs in N. Korea when our troops were being killed by the "bushel" in N.Korea by "Red China".

If he had ==no N.Korea, no Red China, no Vietnam, no Cuba.

Maybe No USA, I don't know for sure, but it's 56 years too late to blame President Bush for Trumans lack of Bal@#.

[thgdriver]

President Truman (Democrat) refused to authorize the use of a-bombs in N. Korea when our troops were being killed by the "bushel" in N.Korea by "Red China".

If he had ==no N.Korea, no Red China, no Vietnam, no Cuba.

Maybe No USA, I don't know for sure, but it's 56 years too late to blame President Bush for Trumans lack of Bal@#.

[kailumego1]

The truth is our lives aren%u2019t going to be any better because of Saddam Hussein%u2019s execution, nor will ills plaguing Iraq be eradicated.

Think what you want about Saddam Hussein, he was a leader of a sovereign nation, in which we have encroached upon, and undoubtedly made things much, much worst.

And all the propaganda this government, the media, and the movie industry have forged onto Americans isn%u2019t going to alter or change this sad state of affairs.

Here%u2019s what we can look forward too:

7 The civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis will definitely intensify.
7 Additional soldiers will be needed, which will add up to more causality.
7 The clean up and rebuilding of Iraq will become an enormous economic strain on U.S. taxpayers.
7 The hatred for the U.S. will intensify trickling down to other Arabic and Islamic countries.
7 Israel%u2019s national security will become more strained.
7 Some Southeast Asian countries, like Indonesia will join alliance with Islamic extremists, because they opposed U.S. position in Iraq, and the execution of Saddam Hussein.
7 Tensions will escalate creating factionalism among Americans over the war.
7 And, some misguided Americans will vote Republicans right back into office, to continue their reign of %u201Cterror%u201D.