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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Saddam told he should die by the rope like a common criminal Saddam told he should die by the rope like a common criminal By Colin Freeman and Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad, The Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:13am GMT 05/11/2006 Saddam Hussein is to be denied his final wish of an "honourable" death by military firing squad after court officials ruled he should face the gallows as a common criminal if found guilty. The former Iraqi dictator, who is expected to be given the death sentence today when a verdict is delivered in his first war crimes trial, has been demanding execution by the gun rather than the rope, on the basis that he was head of the country's armed forces. But the Iraqi war crimes court in Baghdad has dismissed his request, noting that Saddam failed the entry exam for the Iraqi military academy and only became field marshal by appointing himself when president. Its ruling is in line with legal conventions from Saddam's own time in power: Iraqi courts allowed a quick death by firing squad for those who showed remorse, but required the rope for those who they felt deserved to suffer. Throughout the year-long proceedings, Saddam has shown no contrition, defiantly telling a closing session of the trial: "This case is not worth the urine of an Iraqi child." The verdict will be announced with Iraq under virtual lockdown for fear that Saddam's supporters will use it to stoke further insurgent and sectarian violence. Baghdad is expected to be sealed off and its airport shut as the chief judge in the trial, Rauf Abdel Rahman, delivers his verdict. A curfew has already been imposed on the northern province of Salaheddin, which includes the city of Tikrit, where 69-year-old Saddam was born. Iraqi and American officials fear an escalation of savage clashes between Sunni and Shia Muslims, which are already claiming upwards of 100 lives a day in Baghdad and surrounding provinces. The minority Sunnis, who enjoyed privileges under Saddam's rule, see the special tribunal as little more than a tool for political revenge by Iraq's new Shia-led government. Today's judgment, which is against Saddam and seven former members of his regime, relates to the killing of 148 Shias rounded up after an assassination attempt on the president during a visit to Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982. Some of the victims, who allegedly included woman and children, were tortured before they died. Handwriting experts have told the court that the signature on their death warrants was Saddam's. He maintains his innocence, insisting that the court is an illegitimate tool of the US occupation. Although today's verdict is all but certain to confirm Saddam's guilt and impose the death sentence, it remains unclear exactly when it will be carried out. "From the time any verdict is handed down there is an automatic appeal to a nine-judge panel," said one source close to the tribunal. "They can take as long as they want over whether to dismiss the appeal but if they do, then under Iraqi law the sentence must be carried out within 30 days." Three of the others in the dock alongside Saddam are likely to be sentenced to die. They are: Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former industry minister who once said that any Iraqi who did not work hard should face execution; Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, a former intelligence chief accused of involvement in rounding up Dujail villagers; Awad Hamed al-Bander, a former revolutionary court judge accused of presiding over show trials and summary executions. Another three, all local Ba'ath party officials in the Dujail area, are expected to get long jail sentences, while one of their colleagues is expected to be released. Were Saddam to hang within the coming months, it would leave him as an absent defendant in his current, second trial for massacring thousands of Iraqi Kurds during the al-Anfal campaign in the 1980s. He has also been charged with crimes including the illegal invasions of Iran and Kuwait. Prosecutors appear to be happy for those trials to proceed without him. If the death sentence is pronounced and the appeals process exhausted, there will be a question over what will happen to Saddam's body. US commanders believe he may have to be buried at a secret, unmarked spot in the desert to prevent his grave becoming a shrine for supporters.
Poster Comment: So no trial for the use of poison gas against the Kurds is required now? (He was found guilty for killing innocent people in retaliation from a village near where there was an assassination attempt on him). Is it because the use of chemical weapons would also implicate the USA which supplied the chemicals and the satellite images used for artillery target references?
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"The desire to rule is the mother of heresies." -- St. John Chrysostom
Illegal invasions of Iran and Kuwait? As oppossed to the legal invasion of Iraq by the US? Good lord- just shoot the man in the back of the head in an execution cell somewhere Soviet Sytle- because that is what this is- an effing politicized show trial by a hypocritical superpower that once used this man to do its dirty work in the ME. And everyone on Earth (excluding Americans who are incapable of introspection of any sort) knows it.
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