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Saddam Hussein brings Koran to hanging with "fear in his face"

December 30, 2006
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By Joerg Fischer, dpa

Baghdad/Cairo -- Shortly before dawn ushered in the most important Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, ex-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti was refusing the hood as he faced the gallows.

With dishevelled hair, the downcast former dictator offered no resistance to the two balaclava-clad hangmen who tied a black cloth round his neck and led him to his fate.

Saddam glanced briefly at the gallows then stepped onto the platform where the two placed a noose over his head and tightened it.

That was the point at which the footage beamed across the world just a few hours after the execution ended. Saddam's final moments as he hung from thick yellow rope were not shown.

"We took him to the gallows and he was saying some few slogans. He was very, very, very, broken," said Iraqi National Security Adviser Muwaffak al-Rubaie, one of the few witnesses.

"This dark chapter has now ended," al-Rubaie said, adding that now the new Iraqi government and its US mentors could draw a line under the bloody era of Saddam's dictatorship.

Hundreds of Iraqis - mostly Shiites in Baghdad and the holy city of Karbala - could not contain their delight at the demise of their former oppressor and took to the streets cheering and firing shots into the air.

The dictator's death brought satisfaction to the many victims of the regime who languished for years in its prisons and to the families of the untold numbers of people who were murdered by Saddam's henchmen.

"We want to see the blood of the man who destroyed our lives and who has our sons on his conscience flow," these people had demanded time and again.

Saddam's final hours were marked by confusion as one report after another came out about the time of his execution.

The US government vehemently denied reports from Friday afternoon that Saddam had already been given over to the Iraqi authorities.

It seemed the wary Americans thought the risk too great that their prisoner might escape at the last moment. "We don't want to find him hiding in another hole in the ground," a US military spokesman said.

For hours, government representatives held discussions in Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone. Finally at around midnight, Munir Haddad, a judge on the Iraqi appeals court, announced the time of the execution: 6 a.m. (0300 GMT).

Saddam had to remain a little longer in the hands of his nemesis, the Americans he had cursed as "invaders and occupiers," who had toppled him from power in April 2003 and whose soldiers discovered him seven months later hiding in a spider hole on a farm.

The prisoner was handed over about an hour before the execution - outside the US-controlled Green Zone.

"The Americans were not at the execution. They were not even in the building," al-Rubaie stressed. Apparently it was important at the end to avoid the impression that the US was in any way involved with the execution.

Al-Arabiya news network reported that the final act in the story of Saddam's life was played out in a building belonging to the Iraqi secret services in the Khadimiya district of north-west Baghdad, home to one of the holiest shrines to the Shiites who had been so mercilessly persecuted by the tyrant.

Clutching a copy of the Koran, Saddam was led into the building. "You could see the fear in his face," al-Rubaie said. // © 2006 DPA

 
A video grab taken from Russian NTV channel shows ousted Iraq President Saddam Hussein (C) moments before being hanged in Baghdad on Saturday 30 December 2006. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed early Saturday morning four days after an Iraqi court upheld the death sentence handed down after he was convicted for the 1982 massacre in the Iraqi city of Dujail. EPA/NTV

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