Saddam To Hang For War Crimes
Clashes, Celebrations As Former Iraqi President Is Sentenced To Death
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Saddam Given Death Penalty
Saddam Hussein, the former President of Iraq, was sentenced to death by Iraq's High Tribunal for the 1982 killing of 148 Shiites. The White House applauded the verdict. Charlie D' Agata reports.
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Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein yells at the court as a bailiff attempts to silence him as the verdict is delivered during his trial held under tight security in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone on Sunday, Nov. 5, 2006. (AP)
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Iraqis celebrate the death sentence verdict for former leader Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. (AP)
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Meanwhile, in the former leader's hometown of Tikrit, Iraqis hold up images of Saddam Hussein as they protest the death sentence verdict, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2006. (AP Photo/Bassem Daham)
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Iraqi soldiers watch as the death sentence is told to former leader Saddam Hussein, at their base in Baqouba, Iraq, Sunday Nov. 5, 2006. (AP Photo/Mohammed Adnan)
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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.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 165 CommentsI understand that the sentence will not be carried out immediately... and that instead further trials are planned... focusing on Saddam's operations in Kurdistan, Iran and Kuwait... That will indeed be interesting...
Will we see that photograph of Saddam meeting with the current secretary of defence... will he be able to enter into evidence the fact that during the Iran/ Iraq war... he purchased weapons of mass slaughter from the US Government?
It is difficult to be overly optimistic about much in Iraq... even the death of our old nemesis Saddam, may in the end... create more problems than solutions...
In a culture that values martydom, surely Saddam Hussein must think that he can't loose...
The question is - when will GW Bush pay for his crimes against the Iraqi people.
Now we know why all of George Bush's messengers have been making unannounced visits to Iraq in recent weeks.
When will George Bush be put on trial for starting his own "100 Year War" in Iraq that has so far cost us almost 3000 lives of US servicemen?
If the United Nations would start taking world security seriously our stupid president wouldn't have had to take us into Iraq alone. I realize some may disagree. But do you at least agree that the UN does not seem to be able to come to an agreement that with the present state of technology, that the world is too dangerous to have single people controlling entire countries? Doesn't that sound a little scary to you? I mean, a person like that can start a war as easily as I can enter this text.
...worsened if the court were actually more just?
I'm not so much worried about Hussein hanging or not hanging; he's only one person... it's the symbolism that matters, and in my opinion there's greater symbolism in a due process than his life or death...
Tom,
St.Louis, MO.
Is this what you see from this verdict? An escalated civil way? I thought Saddam was discredited without power - so this verdict and sentence is nothing more than window dressing and electioneering by Bush.
Is this not correct?
Interestingly, the misdeeds that Hussein was charged with appear to be shared by the leader of the United States.
1) Willful killing: George Bush presided over dozens of executions while Governor of Texas. As President, he presided over the slaughter of thousands of Iraqis. Obviously, he cares not about the sanctity of human life.
2) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty: Secret prisons, Guantanamo Bay, suspects not allowed lawyers
3) Torture: Abu Ghraid, Guantanamo Bay
4) Enforced disappearance of persons: The CIA "rendition program" that whisks away people to secret prisons for interrogation and detainment
5) Serious injury to the body: The thousands of people maimed during the attack on Iraq
WHAT WAS CLINTON DOING WHEN OSAMA BIN LADEN WAS ON THE LOOSE.(Too busy in the Oval Office with you know who) BUSH MAY NOT BE BRIGHT AND THEREFORE CANNOT FERRET OUT THE TRUTH FROM HIS ADVISORS BUT HE DOES TRY AND IS AN HONEST MAN.
When Bush was elected in 2000, or more accurately, appointed by the Supreme Court, and preceded with the Iraq fiasco, the world, for the most part, gave the American people due respect and placed most the blame on the administration. After the American people having condoned/supported him by re-electing him in 2004 the world now holds a very different view. ==
They are right. I voted against Bush both times, and the first time had nothing to do with Iraq, but against the continued borrow-and-spend policies started back in the Reagan administration. However, even though I voted against Bush in 2004 I am still responsible for our situation as is everyone who considers himself or herself American because America, through the voting process, accepts Bush%u2019s actions and we are in fact all Americans.==
If we continue to elect the same congress that has, and continues, to approve the administrations decisions we are not just responsible but indeed complicit in their acts.
Thank you, CBS, for giving us this venue to express our selves.
Time will tell a very differently story of the Bush administration and the affect we have had on the country of Iraq. Iraq has already had huge changes.
Since the war
98% of children vaccionated against polio
30,000 business have opened
4500 school rebuit with over 8 million textbooks
No cell phones under Saddam now 5 million people
25% of Parliment is female highest in any Arab country
freedom of speech - 150 newspapers and radio programs
Can we really put a time frame on how long it should take to unify a country of 25 million after Saddam had control over them for 30 years.
What can you say about the intelligence of a people who follow and worship leaders like al-Sadr, Bin Laden and their ilk. Further more, the entire Islamic community worldwide does little to condemn their violent fundamentalist brethren, and the world is tired of hearing them hem and haw as they pay lip service to the atrocities of their terrorist brothers, while covertly seeking funds worldwide to continue the "Jihad" against the "infidels" of the world, which include anyone with a good life in the Western world. They are jealous of our lifestyles, opportunities and freedom, and their iron-fisted tyrants have brainwashed them to believe we westerners are the root of all of their failures and problems.
Look what Allah has done for them.
Selah
Those are pretty cute little figures you have there. From the looks of it, you probably got them of the GOP website or the Rush Limbaugh show. I really like how one-sided they are.
Cell phones? Are you joking? Woo-hoo, the Iraqis can now plan suicide bombings in real time!! You forgot to mention that tens of thousands have died in only 3 years...how convenient for you and your political party...you forgot to tack on "Stay the Course !" at the end of your post.
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See all 165 Comments