Saddam Hussein's hanging shocks world

Deposed Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, was hanged, December 30, triggering worldwide protest and bringing to an end his brutal and violent regime.

The 69–year–old leader, who was overthrown by a multi–national coalition led by the United States in 2003, was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death in November last year.

Iraqi television initially said Saddam's half–brothers Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al–Bandar were hanged too. But National Security Aviser Mouwafak al–Rubaie, who attended the execution, later said the two men would be hanged after the Muslim holiday Eid al–Adha ends in the first week of January.

A video and photo of the execution of Saddam were publicized a few hours after the execution. The person who took the video of the execution using a mobile phone has been arrested following investigations. "The government has arrested the person who made the video of Saddam's execution," the adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al–Maliki said. "He was an official who supervised the execution and now he is under investigation."

The photos showed an ugly scene in Saddam’s last moments of life, with taunts and cries of: "Go to hell!" called out before he dropped through the gallows floor and swung dead at the end of a rope.

According to witnesses, Saddam responded, "We go to heaven and you go to hell."

Some of the last words Saddam heard, according to the leaked cell phone video, were a chant of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada," a reference to Muqtada al–Sadr, the radical anti–American Shiite cleric, whose Mahdi Army militia is believed responsible for many of this year's wave of killings that have targeted Sunnis and driven many from their homes.

Al–Sadr's father was killed by Saddam. The militant cleric is a key al–Maliki backer.

According to the statements of those present – including some relatives of the former dictator – Saddam Hussein was carrying a copy of the Quran, which he asked to be given to a friend, and he refused to cover his head with a hood. Saddam was executed in a military zone in the Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah.

Shiites in Najaf celebrated the ex–dictator’s death on the streets, gathering in jubiliant crowds and firing in the air. In Tikrit, the city the dictator came from, people were in mourning.

The Indian government has expressed disappointment over the deposed Iraqi leader's hanging and various political parties have slammed the action. Indian Muslims strongly condemned the execution blaming the US and voicing outrage that Iraqi authorities had executed Saddam on a major religious holiday. In Kashmir, about 100–200 activists of pro–independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) gathered at the historic Lal Chowk and shouted anti–US and anti–Bush slogans. The angry protestors also burnt US President George W. Bush's effigy.

Many Arab nations also protested his execution, saying his hanging for crimes against humanity was provocatively timed to coincide with the Muslim Eid al–Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) and would worsen violence in Iraq.

The drama of Saddam's violent end was brought into living rooms across the Arab world with television pictures of masked hangmen tightening the noose around his neck. Separate film of Saddam's body in a white shroud also upset many viewers.

"This is the worst Eid ever witnessed by Muslims. I had goosebumps when I saw the footage," said Jordanian woman Rana Abdullah, 30, who works in the private sector.

Libya, the only state to show solidarity with Saddam in his death, declared three days of mourning and cancelled public Eid celebrations. Flags on government buildings flew at half–mast.

"I don't have any sorrow or compassion for the man, but the timing is very stupid and Muslims will think this was done to provoke their feelings," said Ehab Abdel–Hamid, 30, a novelist and senior editor at Cairo's independent al–Dostour newspaper.

Abdel–Bari Atwan, editor of the London–based Al–Quds al–Arabi newspaper, told Al Jazeera television, "Arab public opinion wonders who deserves to be tried and executed: Saddam Hussein who preserved the unity of Iraq, its Arab and Islamic identity and the coexistence of its different communities such as Shi'ites and Sunnis ... or those who engulfed the country in this bloody civil war?"

Tajeddine El Husseini, a Moroccan international economic law professor, said Saddam's "symbolic sacrifice" on a religious day when Muslims slaughter animals would make things worse.

"There is the risk that Baathist elements could strike US interests even outside Iraq," he said.

In Afghanistan, which preceded Iraq as the first target in the US–declared "war on terror," a commander of the resurgent Islamist Taliban movement said Saddam's demise would galvanize Muslim opposition to the United States.

"His death will boost the morale of Muslims. The jihad in Iraq will be intensified and attacks on invader forces will increase," Mullah Obaidullah Akhund told Reuters by telephone.

News of Saddam's death shocked Palestinians, many of whom had seen him as an Arab hero for his missile attacks on Israel during the 1991 Gulf War that ended Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.

"The Americans wanted to tell all Arab leaders who are their servants that they are like Saddam, nothing but a sheep slaughtered on Eid," said Abu Mohammad Salama at a Gaza mosque.

Hamas lawmaker Mushir al–Masri said Saddam's execution was a "proof of the criminal and terrorist American policy and its war against all forces of resistance in the world."

In Kuwait, where Saddam is reviled for his 1990 invasion, Ahmed al–Shatti, a Health Ministry official, said the Iraqi leader was a criminal whose trial had been incomplete.

"He did not answer for the crime of occupying Kuwait and the atrocities he committed in Kuwait," Shatti said.

In Shi'ite non–Arab Iran, Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid Reza Asefi said the hanging of the man who led Iraq into a costly war with the Islamic Republic in the 1980s was a victory for Iraqis.

But Yousef Molaee, an Iranian international law expert, took the view that the dawn execution was a failure for justice.

"Saddam's crimes in the eight–year war against Iran, such as chemical bombardments, remained unanswered because of the hasty and unfair trial," state news agency IRNA quoted him as saying.

In Mecca, Sunni Arab pilgrims voiced outrage that Iraqi authorities had executed Saddam on a major religious holiday.

"His execution on the day of Eid...is an insult to all Muslims," said Jordanian pilgrim Nidal Mohammad Salah.

Ahmed Al Mudaweb, a political editor at Bahrain's Al Watan daily, said the former president's hanging would give him martyr status and spur the insurgency by his fellow Sunnis in Iraq.

Khalaf al–Alayan, a Sunni Iraqi lawmaker, told Al Jazeera from Jordan, "This was an act of vengeance against Iraq."

Jordanians, once fervently pro–Saddam, said his execution for the 1982 killings of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites, was incongruous.

"He surely wasn't the only tyrant in the world. The irony is he was tried and hanged for a small crime when he committed worse," said Aline Saeed, a marketing director.

Mohamed Habib, deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's strongest opposition group, said Saddam had been judged by an Iraqi government that was not fully sovereign.

"His execution will have grave consequences and will deepen the ethnic and sectarian violence in Iraq," he said.

Leading Sunni Arab power Saudi Arabia today criticised Iraq's Shi'ite leaders for executing former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein during the Eid al–Adha religious feast, saying his trial had been politicized.

"There is a feeling of surprise and disapproval that the verdict has been applied during the holy months and the first days of Eid al–Adha," a presenter on the official al–Ikhbariya TV said after programming was broken to read a statement.

"Leaders of Islamic countries should show respect for this blessed occasion ... not demean it," said the statement, which was attributed to official news agency SPA's political analyst. "It had been expected that the trial of a former president, who ruled for a considerable length of time, would last longer, ...demonstrate more precision, and not be politicized."

Cuba has also condemned the execution of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as an assassination and called for an end to the US–led war.

"It is political foolishness, an illegal act in a country that has been driven to an internal conflict in which millions of citizens have been exiled or lost their lives," the Cuban Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

It called Saddam's hanging, which was carried out by Iraqis at dawn, an "assassination committed by the occupying power," the United States.

Writing on the website CounterPunch, the London–based leftwing activist Tariq Ali says the fact that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant is beyond dispute.

"But what is conveniently forgotten is that most of his crimes were committed when he was a staunch ally of those who now occupy the country," Ali noted.

It was, as he admitted in one of his trial outbursts, the approval of Washington (and the poison gas supplied by the former West Germany) that gave him the confidence to douse Halabja with chemicals in the midst of the Iran–Iraq war, Ali wrote. "He deserved a proper trial and punishment in an independent Iraq. Not this. The double standards applied by the West never cease to astonish. Indonesia's Suharto who presided over a mountain of corpses (at least a million to accept the lowest figure) was protected by Washington. He never annoyed them as much as Saddam."

"And what of those who have created the mess in Iraq today?" questioned Ali. "The torturers of (Iraqi prisoners in) Abu Ghraib; the pitiless butchers of Fallujah; the ethnic cleansers of Baghdad, the Kurdish prison boss who boasts that his model is Guantanamo?"

"Will (U.S. President George W.) Bush and (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair ever be tried for war crimes?" he asked.

Russia has also condemned the execution of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, warning that it may further 'aggravate' the military and political situation in Iraq and heighten ethnic tensions in the country.

"The situation in Iraq is heading towards a worst–case scenario. The country is slipping into violence and is on the verge of a large–scale civil conflict. Saddam Hussein's death can further aggravate the military–political situation and increase ethnic and religious tensions," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a statement.

"I suppose they (Bush and Blair) can take some comfort that a tyrant has been executed but they also have to live with hundreds of thousands of people who have either died or whose lives are threatened in the Iraq they have created by that war," Amnesty International said not only was Saddam's trial "clearly unfair" but Saddam's hanging was a missed chance to show Iraq had changed from the time when atrocities were committed while he was in power.

Top political figures in Britain have evoked with a mixed response, stating that though it was pleased that Saddam Hussein had been brought to justice for crimes against the Iraqi people, but underlined its opposition to the death penalty.

Breaking silence for the first time, UK's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said that the execution was "completely wrong."

In the message, delivered by his spokesman, Blair added that the hanging, which mobile phone footage showed was preceded by Saddam being taunted, "shouldn't have happened in that way."

However, earlier, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said in a brief statement that she welcomed the "fact that Saddam Hussein has been tried by an Iraqi court for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed against the Iraqi people."

"He has now been held to account," she said, adding, as an afterthought, "We advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime. We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation."

Britain's Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, has strongly condemned the execution, calling the video images "unacceptable."

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has also condemned the way Saddam Hussein was hanged as "deplorable."

Brown, who is expected to take over as Prime Minister when Blair steps down this year, said that the way in which Saddam had been killed was completely unacceptable.

"Now that we know the full picture of what happened as we learn lessons in so many other areas about what's happened in Iraq," he said.

Meanwhile, US authorities have absolved themselves of Saddam's execution, saying that they would have handled it differently, if it were left to them.

"It was not our decision as to what occurred but we would have done it differently," US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said.

"We had absolutely nothing to do with the facility where the execution took place," he said, adding that US forces flew Saddam to the prison where the execution took place at dawn and then withdrew from the building.

Caldwell also said that direct U.S. participation was limited to ferrying Hussein's corpse and several escorts aboard helicopters from the execution site to the Green Zone in Baghdad and on to Tikrit for burial.

According to media reports, US officials have privately expressed frustration that Hussein was executed just four days after an appeals court upheld his death sentence and at the start of a Muslim holiday, Eid al–Adha.

"The ambassador and U.S. mission personnel did engage the government of Iraq on issues relating to procedures involved, and the timing of the execution given the upcoming holy days," said Lou Fintor, a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Baghdad. "While the government of Iraq gave consideration to U.S. concerns, all decisions made regarding the execution were Iraqi decisions based on their own considerations."

"The [US] President is focused on the new way forward in Iraq, so these issues are best addressed out of Iraq, out of Baghdad," deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel said. "[Iraqi] Prime Minister Maliki's staff have already expressed their disappointment in the filmings, so I guess we'll leave it at that."

Stanzel said the US military and the US Embassy in Iraq had expressed misgivings about the timing of Saddam's execution and later about "the process and what took place."

"I think the most important thing to realize is that Saddam Hussein was executed after a long trial – a long and public trial, that met international standards, an appeal that met international standards," White House spokesman Tony Snow said at a briefing.

Snow admitted that there seemed to be "a lot of concern" about the last two minutes of Saddam Hussein's life, but he insisted that Saddam murdered "hundreds of thousands of people" and "that's why he was executed."

The United States launched the Iraq war and toppled the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003 on the grounds that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and ties with al–Qaeda terror network. However, none of these has been proved existent.

Critics of the Iraq war have always claimed that US had waged the war for oil and for establishing the dominance of the West in Middle East.