Saddam Hussein condemned to hang

[Martino]

After a year long show trial, Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death for ordering the killing of 148 people, 24 years ago.


Death penalty for Saddam Hussein

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/6117910.stm

Saddam Hussein has been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging.

The former Iraqi president was convicted by a Baghdad court for his role in the killing of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail in 1982.

His half brother Barzan al-Tikriti was also sentenced to death, as was Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar

Former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan got life in jail and three others received 15 year prison terms.

Another co-defendant, Baath party official Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted.

When called to court, Saddam Hussein, dressed in his usual dark suit and white shirt and carrying a Koran, walked to his customary seat and sat down.

Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman ordered Saddam Hussein to stand while he read out the verdict, but the former president defiantly refused to do so and had to be moved from his seat by court attendants.

As the judge began reading the death sentence Saddam Hussein shouted out "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest) and "Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!"

The former leader looked shocked and furious as the sentence was passed, and continued to shout, denouncing the court, the judge and the US-led occupation force in Iraq.

But the BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson said that after his tirade, which was clearly deliberate, as he was led away from the courtroom, Saddam Hussein seemed to have a small smile of triumph on his face.

"It was as if he was thinking 'I've come here and done what I intended to do'," our correspondent said.

Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman quickly called the defendants one by one
Shortly after the verdict was announced celebratory gunfire could be heard across Baghdad.

In the Shia district of Sadr City there was jubilation on the streets, with people driving around in cars, beeping their horns. There were also jubilant scenes in the holy city of Najaf.

The Baghdad celebrations were in defiance of a 12-hour daytime curfew banning all vehicle and pedestrian traffic which was placed on the whole city of six million people amid fears of violence from Saddam Hussein's Sunni Arab supporters.

The government cancelled all army leave and the city's civilian airport was closed.

Immediately after the sentencing violence reportedly broke out in the mainly Sunni Azamiya district of Baghdad, with machine guns and mortars being fired.

Three nearby provinces, including Salahuddin, which contains Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, are also under curfew.

Thousands of people also defied the curfew in Tikrit, but there it was to voice support for Saddam Hussein and to denounce the verdict.

Sunnis in Tikrit marched through the city, chanting "We will avenge you Saddam."

Almost three years since Saddam Hussein was captured, soaring sectarian violence has brought Iraq to the brink of civil war.

Few Iraqis think the trial verdict will ease conflict, the BBC's Andrew North in Baghdad says.

Even those Iraqis who want to see their former leader dead do not believe his execution would make things any better, our correspondent says.

Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants will be given the right to appeal, but that is expected to last a few weeks and to end in failure for the defendants.

Many critics have dismissed the trial as a form of victors' justice, given the close attention the US has paid to it.

Before the session began former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was ejected from the courtroom after handing the judge a note in which he called the trial a "travesty".

Saddam Hussein's defence team have also accused the government of interfering in the proceedings - a complaint backed by US group Human Rights Watch.

And the former leader's lawyers have attacked the timing of the planned verdict, which comes days before the US votes in mid-term elections.

US President George W Bush's Republican Party is at risk of losing control of Congress in part because of voter dissatisfaction over its handling of the Iraq conflict.

[Martino]

And about that man the Americans found hiding in a hole ...

Saddam: Showman without a script

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/6116884.stm

From the moment, a year ago, when Saddam Hussein's chains were taken off and he sat down in the dock for the first time, he has dominated the court.

Saddam Hussein frequently quoted from the Koran in court
At first he was still regarded with contempt by many of his natural supporters in Iraq and elsewhere.

This was the man who had urged them to shed their life's blood in his defence, and had then meekly surrendered to the Americans.

Slowly, though, his self-possession grew. He looked good in the dock, in clothes that were made especially for him by his old tailor, and he learned how to make his points successfully and well, with an economy of effort.

Weak prosecution

He was helped by the fact that in both his first trial, for the killings of Shia Muslims at Dujail, and in the second one, for the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, the prosecution seemed weak and ill at ease.

The evidence was often poorly assembled, and the arguments ineffectual.

Both the defence and prosecution lawyers had grown up in a legal system which the former Iraqi president himself had controlled.

Under him, justice was often the last consideration.

Whether from religious conviction or calculation, Saddam Hussein took to bringing a finely-bound copy of the Koran into court, and would occasionally quote from it.

He would sometimes shout out verses from it in order to rebuke his judges or accusers.

Other tactics were less effective.

He announced more than once that he was going on hunger strike, but we would rarely hear any more about it.

In the early stages of the Dujail trial, he refused to acknowledge the right of the court to judge him, then meekly pleaded "not guilty" when the question was put to him.

It was only later, as his self-confidence grew, that he would shout out that he was the rightful president of Iraq, that the judges and prosecution should treat him with greater respect, that the invasion which overthrew him had been illegal under international law.

Sniggers

Yet he never seemed to have a coherent defence strategy.

If he had persisted in attacking the questionable legal basis of the US-led invasion he would probably have had much more impact.

But there has always been a rambling, inconsequential element to his speeches, as though the experience of being overthrown had somehow affected his intellect.

In the middle of the Dujail trial, he made a dignified speech about the way his captors were treating him, only to lapse into bathos as his complaints became more and more trivial.

It would no doubt have been more humane if the Americans had allowed him to lock his lavatory door, but it just raised sniggers in court when he complained about it.

His two trials have fallen well short of the standard they should have aimed at.

But Saddam Hussein himself has never managed the kind of aloof dignity that might have won over the people in Iraq whom he once terrorised.

[CBC guy]

What goes around comes around eh.... While I don't agree with the war in Iraq, you have to admit Saddam WAS indeed a pretty nasty dictator.

[LaiSteve66]

Saddam got what he deserved.

[haplesshobo]

I don't understand the point of this thread, what Martino's objection is to about Saddam being sentenced to die? Even if you agree or disagree with the war, Saddam was a evil tyrant who has blood on his hands.

[TB4000]

My only concern is that they're basically killing him sans an international trial, which is giving them the right to kill any of their own without it. This may be an isolated incident, but it's not the democracy they claim they have over there now. And you just know people are going to give Bush credit for this somehow.

[snailpoo]

Originally Posted by TB4000

My only concern is that they're basically killing him sans an international trial, which is giving them the right to kill any of their own without it. This may be an isolated incident, but it's not the democracy they claim they have over there now.

Erm?

Is there any nation that surrenders its sovereign powers to try and punish its own criminals for crimes committed within their territory?

International trials, like the ones before the Hague, usually require the crimes to be committed across borders, crimes like war crimes.

In this trial, Saddam isn't being tried for the crimes he's committed outside of Iraq --he's being tried for crimes committed against Iraqis.

Originally Posted by TB4000

And you just know people are going to give Bush credit for this somehow.

Bush rightly gets credit for this. But for Bush's decision to invade Iraq, Saddam wouldn't have been brought to trial. It's that simple. If Bush gets the blame for everything else that has gone wrong with Iraq, then he gets the credit for bringing Saddam to trial.

You can't bifrucate good from bad solely to give blame and not credit.

[TB4000]

A mockery of a trial with no real justice is a horrible way to start a democracy. Sure, Saddaam has it coming...but the Iraqis technically can not give it to him. He broke no Iraqi law, as he was the man determining law in Iraq during his time in power. He should've been tried internationally as a war criminal. To have the people of Iraq taking an eye for an eye mentality by setting up a puppet judiciary that was not intended to give justice but simply revenge will only hurt their democracy in the long run.

[snailpoo]

Here we have problems with perception and proof:

Originally Posted by TB4000

A mockery of a trial with no real justice is a horrible way to start a democracy.

This is an assertion. How is it a mockery? To get here, you need to prove your next point:

Originally Posted by TB4000

Sure, Saddaam has it coming...but the Iraqis technically can not give it to him. He broke no Iraqi law, as he was the man determining law in Iraq during his time in power.

Somehow, I don't think that this is an accurate and complete assessment of Iraqi law.

Regardless, there are three rather arbitrary points of law that you are assuming.

First, you are assuming that the old Iraqi law under Saddam was written (keep in mind that WRITTEN law and ENFORCED law are two different things) arbitrarily enough to allow Saddam do whatever he wanted.

And two, if you are right under your first assumption, you are assuming that the new Iraqi law wasn't written to apply retroactively. Keep in mind that the ban on retroactive application is a pecularity to American law that may or may not appear in the laws of every country and that may or may not apply to something as obviously wrong as massacre.

And finally, even if you get past one and two, equity IS something that appears in the laws of many countries. In order for your "mockery of a trial" label to work, you're basically claiming that Saddam is faultless under Iraqi law, both new and old. Are you really trying to argue this?

Originally Posted by TB4000

He should've been tried internationally as a war criminal. To have the people of Iraq taking an eye for an eye mentality by setting up a puppet judiciary that was not intended to give justice but simply revenge will only hurt their democracy in the long run.

Problems on two levels.

One, to try him internationally as a war criminal, he'd be tried for the crimes committed against the Iranians, the Kuwaitis, or the coalition forces. The moving party would NOT be the Iraqis.

Two, for all the talk of American Imperialism in invading Iraq, how much MORE do you enforce that perception if you remove Saddam from the jurisdiction of Iraq for trial of war crimes committed against other countries and NOT for the crimes he committed against his own people?



*the above is not legal advice, legal reserach, legal opinion, or legal in any way, and is not to be relied upon for any reason.

[Martino]

Originally Posted by snailpoo

Bush rightly gets credit for this. But for Bush's decision to invade Iraq, Saddam wouldn't have been brought to trial. It's that simple. If Bush gets the blame for everything else that has gone wrong with Iraq, then he gets the credit for bringing Saddam to trial.

You can't bifrucate good from bad solely to give blame and not credit.

Bifrucate?

Oh, I'd like to see all murdering dictators put to trial. I could even live with Saddam's somewhat biased trial and execution if the US declared it was going to invade Iraq simply to remove Saddam, but the invasion was never about that, so how can Mr Bush claim credit for this outcome?

I really wish the US really was concerned about these dictators killing their own people, but I don't see any calls to put Suharto on trial. The Suharto regime killed 200,000 East Timorese alone. Ten times the estimated total for Saddam Hussein's regime.

Could it be that the US wasn't interested in the humanitarian aspect of the Iraq dictactorship?

The massacre in Dujail - horrible, but not secret. The world's media reported it at the time, but the US didn't act back then. The US could have removed Saddam at the time of the first Gulf War - the Kurds actually pleaded for US assistance. The US ignored them, and the world watched Saddam bloodily put down the Kurd insurgence.

You think those dead Kurds will rest easier because of the US's belated arrival?

No, the one thing Bush doesn't deserve is credit. Too many people have died because the US allowed Saddam to stay in power for so long, specifically to counter other elements in the region. As far as Mr Bush is concerned, Saddam's trial and execution is nothing more than politically convenient, just as it was when Saddam was caught.

Oh, and here's a reminder of how spectacularly wrong the US was, about everything to do with the Iraq invasion ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2479807.stm

[snailpoo]

Originally Posted by Martino

Bifrucate?
No, the one thing Bush doesn't deserve is credit. Too many people have died because the US allowed Saddam to stay in power for so long, specifically to counter other elements in the region. As far as Mr Bush is concerned, Saddam's trial and execution is nothing more than politically convenient, just as it was when Saddam was caught.

Now this is amusing.

Was America right to take Saddam out, or wasn't it?

Oh, you disagree now but you agree then?

This is exaclty what I mean by bifrucate. Hey, it's one action, but suddenly you're able to only give blame and not credit for the results of the SAME ACTION?

Oh, and as for the mistake as to how long this was taking, I'm sure that the decade in which you changed your mind of whether Saddam should have been taken out changed the centuries of hatred between the Sunnis and the Shiites.

[Martino]

Originally Posted by snailpoo

Now this is amusing.

Was America right to take Saddam out, or wasn't it?

Oh, you disagree now but you agree then?

This is exaclty what I mean by bifrucate. Hey, it's one action, but suddenly you're able to only give blame and not credit for the results of the SAME ACTION?

Oh, and as for the mistake as to how long this was taking, I'm sure that the decade in which you changed your mind of whether Saddam should have been taken out changed the centuries of hatred between the Sunnis and the Shiites.

I know, this is torture for me. Am I pleased or not?!?

[Faithless]

I keep thinking that there are two different stories going on in Iraq with Saddam.

There is the fact that he is who he is. And he will be held to pay for that.

There is also the fact of what Iraq is, too.

You can't go back to Saddam. You've got to deal with Iraq as it is and whose got their fingers in its pie and fucking it up, now.

[yoMAMA]

This is AWESOME.

great day for the Iraqi people.

[robotic]

Originally Posted by haplesshobo

I don't understand the point of this thread, what Martino's objection is to about Saddam being sentenced to die? Even if you agree or disagree with the war, Saddam was a evil tyrant who has blood on his hands.

:D since this thread isn't in the rant room,
i'm guessing martino just posted it to inform/spread the news.