Judges put Saddam Hussein’s appeal process into motion on Monday as Baghdad lifted a round-the-clock curfew imposed to prevent attacks in the aftermath of the ousted president’s death sentence.
Saddam was sentenced to hang by the Iraqi high tribunal, which found him guilty on Sunday of crimes against humanity in the case of 148 Shi’ite civilians killed in revenge for a 1982 attempt on the then Iraqi leader’s life.
The verdict served only to deepen Iraq’s bitter religious divide, with Shi’ites celebrating it as a victory against their former oppressor and some Sunni Arabs protesting against this latest humiliation of the ousted regime.
Tribunal spokesperson Raed Juhi said the court has 10 days, starting on Monday, within which it must submit its ruling justifying Saddam’s execution to an appeals committee. This panel will then invite input from the prosecution.
Defence lawyers also said they will submit their arguments.
”My experience with this court shows that there is no benefit to gain from appealing because this court is political; nevertheless we will appeal,” lead defence lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said.
Twenty days after the 10-day filing deadline, the case will be sealed and the panel will retire to consider its verdict. No date has been set for its final judgement, which is binding, said Juhi, the court’s investigative judge.
If the final verdict confirms Saddam’s guilt, he will be executed within 30 days, and some powerful Iraqi voices are calling for the judges not to dawdle.
”We strongly feel that every day he lives is not good for the Iraqi people. We need to put an end to him, to this dictator,” said Bassam Ridha, a senior aide to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
”I hope this issue comes to an end quickly. Hopefully, in the next few months — before next summer — he will be dead,” he said, adding it was his personal view and he was not seeking to influence the verdict.
Street rallies
The satisfaction of al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government at the verdict was mirrored in the joyful street rallies held to celebrate the death sentence in Shi’ite and Kurdish areas across Iraq.
”This just sentence on Saddam has comforted me greatly,” said Fatima Mohammed, a teacher in her 50s living in the mainly Shi’ite city of Kut, who lost six brothers to Saddam’s security forces in a 1982 purge against al-Maliki’s then banned Dawa party.
”It’s a great day. We do not know how we can express our feelings on such a great day,” said Wahid Dairam, a 45-year-old writer living in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf. ”The blood of our brothers and fathers in the mass graves was not spilled in vain. Today, their killer is facing a just fate.”
But among Saddam’s supporters in Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority, there was anger at a ruling many argued had been forced on Iraq by foreign powers, in particular the United States.
In Hawijah, a Sunni town in northern Iraq, hundreds of schoolchildren and women gathered and linked their arms bearing portraits of Saddam and placards demanding their former leader’s release.
Here — as elsewhere in Sunni regions of Iraq — the threat of violence was not far from the surface.
”The Americans and the Iraqis who are with them will see black days ahead of them in Iraq,” warned Abdullah Zamar Hassan, a 49-year-old shopkeeper.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi authorities lifted the round-the-clock curfew that was imposed in Baghdad, Diyala and Salaheddin since Sunday 6am local time.
An Interior Ministry official said the ban on pedestrian movement was lifted from 4pm local time on Monday, while the vehicle ban would be lifted from 6am on Tuesday.
It was not clear whether Baghdad airport would be reopened after it was closed for two days.
A security official said that the Baghdad curfew had been successful, with almost no violent incidents reported overnight in a city that has for months been at the centre of a bloody sectarian turf war.
Elsewhere, sporadic violence continued. In Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, a bomb exploded on a bus and wounded 10 passengers, two of them seriously, police said.
US headquarters on Monday announced that five more of its soldiers had been killed, including two when a helicopter crashed on Monday in the north of the country.
”Two Task Force Lightning soldiers attached to 25th Combat Aviation Brigade were killed when a helicopter crashed in Salaheddin province,” the military said, adding that no enemy fire had been observed in the area.
The latest deaths brought the US military’s death toll in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 2 832 according to an Agence France-Presse count based on Pentagon figures.
There are still 150 000 US troops in Iraq more than three-and-a-half years after Saddam’s overthrow, and falling domestic support for their mission has become the key issue in Tuesday’s US congressional elections. — AFP
