Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging at an unspecified location outside Baghdad's Green Zone for crimes against humanity.
The news was confirmed to the BBC by the Iraqi deputy foreign minister. Iraqi TV said the execution took place just before 0600 local time (0300GMT). A representative of the prime minister and a Sunni Muslim cleric were present.
It is unclear whether Saddam Hussein's half-brother and a former Iraqi chief judge were also executed. All three were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November after a year-long trial over the 1982 killings of 148 Shias in the town of Dujail.
A small group of Iraqis including a representative of the prime minister and a Sunni Muslim cleric were brought to a building somewhere outside the Green Zone and watched as the sentence was read out to Saddam Hussein, the BBC's John Simpson says.
The former Iraqi leader was carrying a copy of the Koran and asked for it to be given to a friend. The noose was then placed around his neck and his face was hooded before the trap door was released. The execution took just a few minutes.
Video footage of the execution is expected to be released as final proof of Saddam Hussein's demise although it is expected to stop short of showing the actual death, our correspondent says. US troops and Iraqi security forces are on high alert for any violent backlash. The US State Department has urged all its embassies to increase security.
'End of a dark period'
News of Saddam Hussein's execution was broadcast on state-run Iraqiya television, as patriotic music and images of national monuments were played out.
Saddam Hussein was hanged first, followed by Barzan and then Bandar, it announced. However, an Iraqi national security advisor has since said only Saddam Hussein was hanged.
A scrolling headline read: "Saddam's execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq's history."
Other Arab TV stations aired live footage of the sunrise over Baghdad's Firdous Square, where US Marines pulled down a statue of Saddam Hussein, after he was deposed in April 2003.
The BBC's Peter Greste in Baghdad says Shias have generally welcomed Saddam Hussein's death and hailed the execution as justice for the suffering endured under his leadership.
But Saddam's own Sunni tribesman were angered by his treatment and may well protest once more, our correspondent adds.
'Held to account'
US President George W Bush hailed the execution as "an important milestone" on the road to building an Iraqi democracy, but warned it would not end the deadly violence there.
He said: "It is a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move forward after decades of oppression that, despite his terrible crimes against his own people, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial.
"It is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror."
UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett welcomed the fact that Saddam Hussein had been tried by an Iraqi court "for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed" and said "he has now been held to account".
France called on Iraqis to "look towards the future and work towards reconciliation and national unity".
A dictator created then destroyed by America By Robert Fisk
12/30/06 "The Independent" -- -- Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.
But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?
No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.
In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.
Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.
And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.
Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.
"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth. His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.
I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.
I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.
It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.
But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new "Crusaders".
When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a thought. So many crimes avenged.
السلام عليكم اعتذر لضعف الانكليزية وساكتب بالعربية صدام لم يترك عشيرة او ماة بالعراق الا وقتل منها او شرد قسم من عائلتها الى الخارج صدلم طرطور رفع راسه ومنخريه عاليا على العراقيين واستعمل الحزب ذو المباديء القومية الاشتراكية لصالحه وبشكل مخابراتي لقد قتل من عائلتي عدد لا يستهان به الخ ولكن وبالرغم من الحكم عليه بالاعدام كان على الحكومة الهزيلة الحالية ان لا تقتله في العيد على الاقل ثلاثة ايام بعده او اكثر ولا اطيل عليكم فحكامنا اليوم ليس احسن من صدام بالرغم من ادعائهم بانهم انتخبوا ديمقراطيا وعلى رلسهم رئيس الوزراء او غيره لقد مر عام والعراقيين يموتون بواسطة مليشيات بدر وجيش المهدي وربما عدد الموتى تعدى الدجيل وحلبجة ولهذا اقول ان هذه الحكومة ستحاكم ايضا وستذبح في العيد الصغير لان صدام عميل للامريكان وهؤلاء عملاء لامريكا وايران التي تنفذ خطتها بالعراق
Akrawi. It seems we agree on this issue. I am sorry to hear that you lost members of your family to the Baathists. A number of my family were jailed (including my father and most of my uncles) but thankfully they were eventualy relased and to this day we don't know why they were incarcerated and now we will never know. Saddam was brought into power by the American's and was eventually executed by them. I will post further comments once we receive the viewpoints of the other regular members of this forum. It is an important subject and certainly worth exploring further. Ayamek Saaeda. Regards. Azinorum
salam to all and kol 3am wa antom beekheyr. I agree with akrawi, saddam shouldn't have been executed now and so quickly. what about the crimes againts our kurd brothers and else? we will never know the truth and america should be happy about that coz these dogs gave the weapons to saddam to commit these crimes. About the fact that saddam was killed at the 1st day of 3eid i heard an iraqi mp today saying that today is not the 1st day of 3eid in iraq but tomorrow sunday. For sunni iraqis today is the 1st day and tomorrow for shia iraqis, which means that these cowards of the government are clearly targeting iraqi sunnis by telling them: look we don't care about you.
About the fact that Saddam was killed at the 1st day of 3eid i heard an iraqi mp today saying that today is not the 1st day of 3eid in iraq but tomorrow sunday. For sunni iraqis today is the 1st day and tomorrow for shia iraqis, which means that these cowards of the government are clearly targeting iraqi sunnis by telling them: look we don't care about you.
Firstly let me say welcome and Kul Aam waintah bekhair. Yes many Iraqis think the same. Why did they execute Saddam on the first day of Eid (whether it be Shiaa or Sunna). It was a big mistake by Maliki and his puppet government. Instead of bringing Iraq together they keep proving that this is not part of their political agenda.
I disagree with many of you, President Saddam Hussein(may you rest in peace) was right and all of us were wrong, He said the Americans, Zoinists, Persians want to tear Iraq apart and if you see who was behind his unjust killing you same only the Persians around him. May all traitors, and Espically Persians pay a high price you are responsilbe for the more than 700,000 deaths in Iraq, including our beloved President Saddam, history hi show President Saddam was right and many were wrong. May Allah protect your soul and put you heaven. I love my country and hope to live to see the day these pigs are defeated, Inshallah your day will come very soon.
I posted this message on another topic by mistake.
I just came across the full video of the hanging with sound. Please beware as the video is very graphic so if your are faint hearted don't click the below link.
This was obviously filmed using a mobile phone and as the read a verse from the Koran you can hear one of the excecutioners shout "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada". Further on another of the executioners can be heard shouting "ya3eesh mohamad baqir el 9adr".
Saddam's last words: various quotes from CNN, Al Jazeera and the BBC.
CNN
As a noose was tightened around Hussein's neck, one of the executioners yelled "long live Muqtada al-Sadr," Haddad said, referring to the powerful anti-American Shiite religious leader.
Hussein, a Sunni, uttered one last phrase before he died, saying "Muqtada al-Sadr" in a mocking tone, according to Haddad's account.
The judge said Hussein appeared "totally oblivious to what was going on around him. I was very surprised. He was not afraid of death."
AL JAZEERA
ونقلت وكالة الصحافة الفرنسية عن الربيعي قوله إن صدام حسين صعد إلى منصة الإعدام وكان "هادئا ومتماسكا وشجاعا" وهو ما يتناقض مع تصريحات المستشار السابقة حول صدام التي كذبها شريط الإعدام المصور.
وقال لمحطة تلفزيونية عراقية إن صدام أدار وجهه نحوه وكأنه يقول له "لاتخف" حسب تعبير الربيعي، مضيفا أن شعورا غريبا انتابه عندئذ. وأكد حدوث مواجهة بسيطة مع جلاديه بسبب رفضه وضع غطاء الرأس "انتهت برضوخ الآخرين".
وقال القاضي منير حداد الذي حضر تنفيذ الإعدام "لقد تحلى برباطة جأشه حتى النهاية. لم يبد أي شحوب على وجهه إلا في اللحظة الأخيرة".
وأضاف أن صدام كان متحديا حتى اللحظة الأخيرة، "سأله أحد الحضور: هل أنت خائف؟ فأجاب: أنا لا أخشى أحدا. أنا طول عمري مجاهد ومناضل وأتوقع الموت في أي لحظة". وزاد "يسقط الأمريكان ويسقط الفرس".
BBC NEWS
Judge Haddad: One of the guards present asked Saddam Hussein whether he was afraid of dying.
Saddam's reply was that "I spent my whole life fighting the infidels and the intruders", and another guard asked him: "Why did you destroy Iraq and destroy us? You starved us and you allowed the Americans to occupy us."
His reply was, "I destroyed the invaders and the Persians and I destroyed the enemies of Iraq... and I turned Iraq from poverty into wealth."
BBC: There was no question Saddam was drugged?
Judge Haddad: Not at all. Saddam was normal and in full control. He was aware of his fate and knew he was about to face death. He said: "This is my end... this is the end of my life. But I started my life as a fighter and as a political militant - so death does not frighten me."
BBC: What happened next?
Judge Haddad: They untied his hands and tied them again behind his back.
They put his feet into shackles and he was taken upstairs to the gallows.
He was reciting, as it was his custom, "God is Great!" and also some political slogans like: "Down with the Americans!" and "Down with the Invaders!"
He said: "We're going to Heaven and our enemies will rot in Hell!"
And he also called for forgiveness and love amongst Iraqis, but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians.
BBC: And then?
Judge Haddad: When he was taken to gallows, the guards tried to put a hood on his head but he refused.
Then he recited verses from the Koran. Some of the guards started to taunt him - by shouting Islamic words. A cleric who was present asked Saddam to recite some spiritual words. Saddam did so but with sarcasm.
These were his last words.
And then the chord tightened around his neck and he dropped to his death.
BBC: But did he say anything else?
Judge Haddad: He said, "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is God's messenger."
< Message edited by azinorum -- 12/31/2006 4:42:49 AM >
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, hanged for crimes against humanity on Saturday, has been buried in the village where he was born 69 years ago.
In a sparsely attended ceremony in Awja, in the Tikrit region north of the capital, the former Iraqi leader was laid to rest in a family plot.
His sons Uday and Qusay, killed by US troops in 2003, are also buried there. New video of his execution posted on the internet, shows he exchanged taunts with onlookers from the gallows.
Just hours after his execution, Saddam Hussein's body was reportedly flown to Awja aboard a US aircraft and handed to clan leaders for burial.
"Saddam Hussein has been buried today at 0400 (0100 GMT) in a place that was constructed during his regime in the centre of Awja," said relative Musa Faraj, quoted by AFP news agency.
The BBC's John Simpson in Baghdad says the Iraqi government will not be worried that Saddam's grave may turn into a place of political pilgrimage.
Ministers here think that his practical influence in Iraq has been entirely finished by his execution, our correspondent says.
The former president was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November over the killings of 148 Shias from the town of Dujail in the 1980s.
Images of Saddam Hussein being taken to the gallows in a Baghdad building his intelligence services once used for executions were broadcast on state TV on Saturday. However the moment of his execution was not shown.
The hanging took place just days after he lost an appeal and hours after he was handed over from US custody.
Saddam Hussein's execution has closed a dark chapter in Iraq's history, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said. In a statement, the prime minister said: "Justice, in the name of the people, has carried out the death sentence against the criminal Saddam, who faced his fate like all tyrants, frightened and terrified during a hard day which he did not expect."
US President George W Bush hailed the execution as "an important milestone" on the road to building an Iraqi democracy, but warned it would not end the deadly violence there.
A small group of Iraqis - including a representative of the prime minister - witnessed the execution at 0600 (0300GMT) on Saturday in a concrete-lined chamber in Khadimiya.
Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told the BBC the former leader went to the gallows quietly: "He was saying some few slogans. He was very, very, very, broken."
However, new images of the execution apparently shot on a mobile phone and aired on some Arab television channels and internet sites, show a more defiant Saddam.
Unlike the official Iraqi videotape of his final moments, the new pictures are accompanied by the sound of Saddam Hussein responding to taunts from those present.
One of the onlookers is heard telling the former Iraqi leader that he destroyed Iraq and was going straight to hell.
Saddam Hussein appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.
He is then heard citing verses from the Koran before the trapdoor opened.
BREAKING NEWS – From the Italian daily Corriere della Sera Moqtada al-Sadr would have been among the the executioners of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
...Two daily newspapers «al-Riadh» and «al-Watan» quote as source some eyewitnesses. "I saw al-Sadr wearing the black hoods inside the room – the eyewitness said – and there was also Abdulaziz al-Hakim [leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq – SCIRI]. They were among the six men wearing hoods that one can see in the images aired by the TV". To see personally the killing of Saddam Hussein before the end of the year would have been, according to the Riyadh’s newspaper, the al-Sadr’s condition to the Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki to keep staying inside the government. Other testimonies tell about men wearing hoods praising Moqtada al-Sadr, as it appears from the mobile phone’s images. These men would have arrived on the place of the execution accompanied by a high political figure. According to «al-Watan» that quotes as sources some internet websites close to the Iraqi resistance, al-Sadr would be the man in the video wearing the hood right behind Saddam Hussein just before he was put the hangman’s noose..
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has appealed to Iraq not to execute two top officials from former president Saddam Hussein's rule.
Ms Arbour said concerns she had about the fairness of Saddam Hussein's trial also applied to his co-defendants.
Her appeal was backed by new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
It follows speculation that Saddam Hussein's half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, and former chief judge Awad al-Bandar are to be hanged soon.
They were sentenced to death over the killings of 148 Shias in the 1980s.
Ms Arbour said she had appealed directly to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani not to carry out the sentences. She said that under international law the men should have the chance to seek a pardon or have their sentences commuted.
Barzan and Bandar's executions were delayed so that Saddam Hussein could be "executed on a special day", national security adviser Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie said on Saturday.
There has been widespread speculation in Iraq that the two executions will go ahead after the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, which ends on Thursday.
But one government official, Sami al-Askari, denied that a date had been set for the executions.
Mobile phone
A spokeswoman for Mr Ban said the UN secretary general was "strongly behind" Ms Arbour's statement. Ms Arbour made a similar appeal before Saddam Hussein was executed. Her plea comes amid growing controversy over the circumstances surrounding Saddam Hussein's hanging.
On Wednesday, the Iraqi government began an investigation into taunts directed at Saddam Hussein before his execution and the unofficial mobile phone footage shot at the time.
Iraqi officials said at least one guard present at the hanging was being questioned over the unofficial video, which appeared on the internet hours the execution and showed the moment of death.
The authorities released official footage of Saddam Hussein's execution to prove to the public that he was dead. But that film did not include any sound and did not show the actual moment of death.
Mr Rubaie condemned the appearance of the unofficial footage, calling it an attempt to widen sectarian divides.
A US military spokesman in Iraq, Maj-Gen William Caldwell, said the execution would have been handled differently if the US had been involved.
god i am happy that he died, so the iraqis can rest al least so can never see his discusting face, god help you iraqis and peace in your great land from most upper north of mesopotamia till the very south of mesopotamia (cradle of civilizations).
god i am happy that he died, so the iraqis can rest al least so can never see his discusting face, god help you iraqis and peace in your great land from most upper north of mesopotamia till the very south of mesopotamia (cradle of civilizations).
Finally, someone Sadiq2006 hates more than the kurds!
OK Sadiq2006, calm down and try to hold it together. You were doing so well? .....this temper of yours will get you into trouble one day.....just think happy thoughts!
Another who will take the secrets of US involvement in Halabcha and the Iranian chemical attacks with him to the grave.
Former Iraq vice-president hanged BBC NEWS WEBSITE - 20 March, 2007
Former Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan has been hanged on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion which overthrew Saddam Hussein.
The execution happened before dawn at a prison in northern Baghdad. An Iraqi official said it had gone smoothly. One of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants, he was sentenced to life for his role in killing Shias in the 1980s, but his punishment was increased at an appeal. The execution was described as "a political assassination" by his son. Ahmad Ramadan was speaking to al-Jazeera TV from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. He said his father would be buried in or near the Iraqi city of Tikrit, near Saddam's burial place.
Ramadan, who was thought to be in his late 60s, was the third senior former official to be hanged since Saddam Hussein was executed on 30 December. All were found guilty of crimes against humanity. Two of Saddam Hussein's former aides, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Ahmed Bandar, were put to death on 15 January.
'Smooth' execution The official said care was taken to avoid a repeat of Tikriti's bungled execution, which led to the condemned man being decapitated during the hanging. "The execution was smooth with no violation," he said.
He said officials from the prime minister's office and the justice ministry were present at the hanging, along with a doctor, a prosecutor, a judge and a lawyer representing Ramadan. Ramadan had said he had no fear of death and that he would "die bravely", according to his lawyer. He was held in US custody until shortly before the execution, when he was handed over to Iraqi authorities.
The sentence was carried out at a prison on a military base in northern Baghdad, an official said. Ramadan had maintained his innocence throughout the legal proceedings. He was convicted along with the deposed Iraqi leader and others over their part in the killing of 148 Shias in the town of Dujail in the 1980s, in apparent revenge following a failed assassination attempt against Saddam Hussein. Ramadan, who was born in the late 1930s, lost his final appeal last week and under Iraqi law had to go to the gallows within 30 days.
He was captured by Kurdish fighters in the northern city of Mosul in August 2003 and handed over to US forces.
i dont think so. 2 tell u the truth i think this trials are just show not justice. many europeans think this also. only usa are pretend to believe this is real fair trial. all my iraqi friends say this trial was not corect. they say saddam desrve 2 die but not 4 this anfal. u r iraqi so u now more than me. i am just giving my ideas. no ofense.
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