November 5, 2006 – 9:16PM
Ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and two of his senior allies were on Sunday sentenced to death by hanging after an Iraqi court found them guilty of crimes against humanity.
If an automatic review of the death sentence fails, the former strongman will hang within 30 days.
Judge Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman ordered bailiffs at the Iraqi High Tribunal to force Saddam to stand before the court as, visibly trembling, the former strongman attempted to shout down the verdict.
“Make him stand,” barked Rahman, as Saddam begged the guards: “Don’t bend my arms. Don’t bend my arms.”
A court official held Saddam’s hands behind his back as Rahman, shouting to be heard over the defendant’s protests, declared: “The highest penalty should be implemented.”
Saddam was sentenced to death for his role in ordering the deaths of 148 Shiites in the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad.
As he was led away, his arms still pinioned, Saddam declared: “Long live Iraq. Long live the Iraqi people. God is greater than the occupier.”
Saddam’s sentencing was a mockery of justice, his defence team said.
“This is a mockery of justice and a judgement that comes from a sham and illegal court created by the US occupation that cannot ever provide a fair trial,” lawyer Bushra al-Khalil, said from Amman where the defence team is based.
Saddam’s half-brother and intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti was also sentenced to death, as was Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, who was convicted as the president of the kangaroo court which ordered the Shi’ites executed.
The former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan received a life sentence.
Three Baath party officials from Dujail – Abdallah Khaden Ruweid, his son Mizhar Abdallah Ruweid and Ali Daeh Ali – received 15 years each. The judge also sentenced them to seven years each for torture but they will serve the sentences concurrently.
Mohammed Azzawi Ali was cleared of involvement in the massacre.
Prosecutors had recommended the acquittal of Azzawi, a Baath Party official in Dujail and one of the lesser-known defendants, for his role in the killings following an assassination attempt on Saddam in 1982.
During the session, the chief judge ordered former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark be expelled.
An Iraqi judge adjourned the court after sentencing Saddam and two of his aides to death.
Sentence to be automatically reviewed
Saddam will have his sentence automatically reviewed by an appeals panel.
If the appeal judges find grounds to question the judgment, Saddam will face another trial.
If not, the sentence imposed today will stand and will be carried out within 30 days.
Under the statutes establishing the tribunal in December 2003, both the defence and the prosecution have the right to appeal the verdict.
Saddam’s lawyers would have to show there was an error in procedure or non-respect for the law.
“If Saddam is condemned to death, the defence will appeal,” Lebanese lawyer Bushra Khalil of Saddam’s defence team said earlier this week.
If the original sentence is upheld, however, the tribunal statutes say that the sentence must be carried out within 30 days, a fact confirmed by public prosecutor Jaafar al-Mussawi.
Saddam has also been on trial since August 21 charged with ordering the Anfal Campaign in the Kurdish heartland of northern Iraq in 1987 and 1988 which resulted in the deaths of more than 180,000 people, prosecutors say.
“As for the other trials, the tribunal will judge those defendants still living, since those who have been executed can no longer be prosecuted,” Mussawi added in June.
The statutes state that no authority, not even the president, can pardon anyone convicted by the tribunal or commute their sentences.
Saddam ‘totally unconcerned’
Earlier, a defiant Saddam shrugged off a possible death sentence, saying he would die without fear and the US occupiers of his country would leave humiliated like they did in Vietnam, his lawyers said.
The lawyers said on Sunday a jovial and highly spirited Saddam chatted with them for more than three hours about the violence in Iraq and mounting US losses just hours before an expected death sentence in his trial for crimes against humanity.
The prospect of the sentence appeared to be the least of his concerns, they said, his focus instead being on the insurgency and the rising US death toll.
“He was totally unconcerned about the verdict. In fact there was derision about the court and this farce,” Khalil al-Dulaimi, the defence team’s chief lawyer told Reuters by telephone from Baghdad.
“I will die with honour and with no fear, with pride for my country and my Arab nation but the US occupiers will leave in humiliation and defeat,” Saddam was quoted by the lawyers as saying.
Saddam seemed ecstatic when another lawyer gave him the Arabic version of the book My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope by Paul Bremer, who led the US civilian occupation authority after the 2003 invasion.
The lawyers who saw him said the former strongman, arrested in December 2003, had scoffed at the book’s title and said he could only see a “doomed America sinking more and more in the Iraqi quagmire, just like what happened in Vietnam”.
“They will see rivers of blood for years to come. It will dwarf Vietnam,” they quoted Saddam, 69, as saying.
“He has an awareness from the experiences of history that the Iraqi people will never submit to occupation,” said Wadoud Fawzi Shams Eddin, a member of the defence team.
“He laughed and said the Americans were paying heavily for their invasion which they thought would be picnic,” said Issam Ghazzawi, a Jordanian lawyer who also saw him on Saturday.
More than 100 US soldiers died during October, the highest monthly toll in nearly two years.
The lawyers said the toppled leader, wearing a dark grey suit with a white shirt, was aware a death sentence was the likely outcome of the year long trial.
But he seemed more concerned, as always, about news of more Americans losses in Iraq.
“When the lawyers told him on Saturday the Americans had suffered seven casualties, he nodded with a broad smile,” Shams Eddin said.
To their surprise, his American captors had provided him with a radio that enabled him to tune into the pro-US Iraqi channels, the lawyers said.
That made him aware that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had put the army on alert and that a curfew would keep Baghdad and two flashpoint provinces locked down on Sunday.
“The brave Iraqi resistance are already defeating the greatest power on earth and for me they are my idols and I will depart content they have preserved Iraq and the Arab glory from the infidel,” said one lawyer who requested anonymity, recalling Saddam’s last words to them before they departed.
AP/AFP/Reuters
Source SMH
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