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IRAQ: SADDAM HUSSEIN SENTENCED TO DEATH November 18, 2006
Zainab Osman
(SomaliNet) The Iraq court on Sunday found former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging; three and a half years after American troops captured Baghdad and ended his dictatorship.
For Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the death sentence was a welcome relief from bad news on the war front and appeared to be an opportunity to score gains with his own fractured constituency of Shiite religious groups.
The case that brought death sentences for Mr. Hussein and two other defendants, including one of his half-brothers, focused on the ruthless repression of a small Shiite town north of Baghdad after what was said to be an assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein in 1982. Judged against the sweep of terror under Mr. Hussein, the case was a narrow one, involving the execution of 148 men and youths from the town of Dujail, and what the court found to have been a "widespread and systematic" persecution of the town's inhabitants in the years that followed.
Among the newly empowered Shiite majority, there was an eruption of joy, and volleys of celebratory gunfire from pistols and automatic weapons.
As the chief judge read out the death sentence, a defiant but exhausted-looking Mr. Hussein shouted: "Long live the people! Long live the nation! Down with the occupiers! Down with the spies!"
The reaction was negative from some in other Arab countries and from Western legal-monitoring and rights groups, which had been critical of procedures at the trial, saying they were loaded in favor of "victor's justice" and that the Bush administration should have insisted that an international court hear the cases.