The opening of a trapdoor and the sudden snap of a hangman’s noose at dawn on Saturday brought an extraordinary end to a political era in Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s execution, however, brought no early end to the country’s spiral of violence. Within hours, a series of car bombs killed dozens of people in Baghdad and south of the capital.
As the former dictator’s body was reportedly flown out of Baghdad for burial, there were also signs of continued political crisis.
Washington’s response to Saddam’s death was only cautiously optimistic about Iraq’s future. Britain’s was even more ambivalent. British Prime Minister Tony Blair made no comment at all, leaving the Foreign Office to issue a statement.
For the outside world, the most powerful image of Saddam’s last day on earth was the official footage of him being led to the gallows, where a masked guard placed a rope around his neck — images that within hours had reached millions on the internet and fanned protests from overseas politicians and human rights activists.
Yet for most Iraqis, the more compelling image was a grainier, shakier one apparently taken by a cellphone. Broadcast on local television, it showed a white-shrouded body, neck twisted to one side. So commanding was Saddam’s hold over the country that he terrorised for more than two decades — and so deep the tides of suspicion in the violently fractured country he has left behind — that many ordinary people clearly sought proof he was really dead.
Saddam’s end finally came in the chill minutes just before dawn, at the start of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha, at Camp Justice, a former military intelligence barracks in north Baghdad. In the hours that followed, details of the execution emerged from official witnesses. Foes and former followers, rivals and victims of his cruelty, reacted to the news with equal passion — and attention inexorably shifted to what his death would mean for the country’s future.
Nuri al-Maliki, the Shia head of the country’s beleaguered unity government, called on Saddam’s former Baath party followers to “help in rebuilding an Iraq for all Iraqis”.
The response from most world leaders was a mix of recognition of Saddam’s crimes, unease over the use of the gallows and hope that Iraq might now move towards greater conciliation, stability and peace. Yet the three bombs that exploded after the hanging — two of them in cars, one in a minibus — left a total of nearly 70 people dead by nightfall on Saturday.
Significantly, the official response to the execution from US President George Bush coupled support for his hanging with a clear sense of the obstacles ahead.
With none of the sense of triumph that marked the Americans’ capture of Saddam from his underground hideout three years ago, Bush said: “Saddam Hussein’s execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops. Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but 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.”
Tony Blair made no immediate comment, and Downing Street said he was content to associate himself with the equivocal response offered by the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett. In apparent sensitivity to controversy in Britain over the decision to put Saddam to death — and the graphic video images of the moments before his execution — she stressed the Iraqis were responsible for that choice.
“I welcome 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. But she added Britain did not support the death penalty “in Iraq or anywhere else” and had made that position “very clear” to Baghdad.
Confirmation that Saddam had been hanged followed days of feverish rumour and speculation, sparked by the decision on Boxing Day by Iraq’s appeals court to uphold his death sentence.
Dressed in black overcoat and trousers, Saddam (69) was said to have struggled briefly when handed over from American custody to the Iraqis at 5.30am, Baghdad time. In a gripping account of the final minutes, al-Maliki’s national security adviser, a witness at the execution, spoke of a “broken and weak” Saddam, but also said he had remained unrepentant and refused the offer of a hood before the trapdoor was opened.
Saddam was led into the small gallows chamber in handcuffs, accompanied by a judge, several Iraqi ministers and a doctor. “The judge took him through the conviction, what he was convicted of,” al-Rubaie said. Initially serene, Saddam was said to have become agitated when he realised his last minutes were being videoed for official release. “He started saying: ‘Long live Islam, down with the West’,” according to al-Rubaie.
But as he was taken to the gallows, Saddam’s mood again changed. “They tied his hands behind his back and it was a little bit tight and I instructed the guard to loosen it up and they tied his legs and carried him up to the gallows,” al-Rubaie said. “He went up and he was offered the hood but he turned it down. He said: ‘No, there’s no need for that.'” As the noose was drawn around the condemned man’s neck, a guard began to read the Muslim declaration of faith, to which Saddam responded: “La illaha ilallah, wa Muhammadu rasu Allah” — “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.”
“He repeated this twice and then he went down in no time. It was so quick, and totally painless, it was over in a second. There was no movement after that,” al-Rubaie said.
There were, he acknowledged, spontaneous scenes of celebration in the room once the deed had been done. Another witness recalled that one of the guards had accused Saddam of having “destroyed” the country.
After almost three decades of rule that left hundred of thousands of Iraqis dead in wars or as victims of his secret police, Saddam was convicted and executed for his role in the murder of 148 Shia men and boys from the village of al-Dujail, following an attack on his motorcade there in 1982.
Two co-defendants sentenced to death over al-Dujail, Saddam’s half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and a former chief judge, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, are to be executed after the end of the four-day feast that traditionally ends the annual Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.
The decision to put Saddam to death so quickly after the appeals court ruling was seen as underscoring the government’s concern about the risk of trouble if it left him alive. The result was the abandonment of plans for a second trial of Saddam, potentially key in building a broader sense of national unity, for the killing of 180Â 000 Kurds in 1988.
The official video footage of a shackled Saddam’s last moments, broadcast on the state-funded al-Iraqiya TV, did not show the execution. The images of the shrouded aftermath were later shown on two local Shia stations.
By late on Saturday night, one of Saddam’s lawyers said his body had been flown to his home town of Tikrit. But citing the former leader’s own wishes, and “security” concerns, his family said he was likely to buried in Ramadi, a Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad.
Saddam’s daughters watched his final moments on TV in Dubai. “They felt very proud as they saw their father facing his executioners so bravely, standing up,” said Rasha Oudeh, who was with the daughters, Raghad and Rana.
The execution was celebrated by Iraqi Shias, who turned out in their thousands in the holy city of Najaf as well as in Baghdad. One of the men whose testimony led to Saddam’s conviction and execution said he was invited to view the body at the Prime Minister’s office.
“When I saw the body in the coffin I cried,” said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost more than two-dozen family members in the reprisal killings that followed the botched 1982 assassination attempt in al-Dujail. “I remembered my three brothers and my father who he had killed. I approached the body and told him: ‘This is the well-deserved punishment for every tyrant’,” he said.
Iran, in a rare moment of accord with the Bush administration, welcomed the execution, having fought an eight-year war with Saddam’s Iraq that claimed the lives of 1,7-million people. “With the execution of Saddam, the life dossier of one of the world’s most criminal dictators was closed,” began the report of his death on Iran’s state-run TV. Some members of the Iraqi exile community in Britain said they had stayed up through the night watching the news in anticipation of Saddam’s execution and had cried when the news was finally confirmed. “We have been waiting for this for 25 years,” said Zara Mohammed, a Kurd whose four brothers were among 150 of her family members seized by Saddam’s regime. Her only regret, she said, was that the hanging itself had not been shown on Iraqi TV. “I want to see this moment, like very woman, every mother, every sister,” she said.
Near Detroit, Michigan, home to a large Iraqi-American community, the news of the hanging brought hundreds of people on to the streets, where they sounded their car horns, and sang and danced in celebration outside a mosque. “This is the first time I’ve seen my dad this happy,” 13-year-old Ali al-Najjar said, with tears in his eyes and a wide grin. “I’ve been praying for this all my life.”
In predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq, the reaction was starkly different. A curfew was imposed in Tikrit, and there were reports of sporadic clashes there. Residents in Awja, the village where Saddam was born, said he was a “martyr” in the fight against the US-backed government. “This is a mercenary court. Iraqi people reject this court. Saddam is the legal president of Iraq,” one young man said, apparently sceptical as to whether Saddam had been hanged. “If they execute him we will rise up.” There were also expressions of anger in the Arab world about the timing of the execution. Saudi Arabia, in which the Muslim holy city of Mecca is located, was particularly critical. A presenter on the official al-Ikhbariya television station broke into scheduled programming to declare: “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. Leaders of Islamic countries should show respect for this blessed occasion … not demean it.”
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, an opponent of the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam, voiced regret that international concerns about the execution had been ignored. “The political consequences of this step should have been taken into account,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said in Moscow.
France “noted” the execution and urged “all Iraqis to look towards the future and work towards reconciliation and national unity”. The Vatican said any use of capital punishment was “tragic, a reason for sadness, even if it deals with a person who was guilty of grave crimes”.
But the strongest criticism came from human rights groups, including Amnesty International, which said that while it welcomed the attempt to hold Saddam responsible for crimes, his trial had not been fair.
“The execution appeared a foregone conclusion once the original verdict was pronounced, with the appeals court providing little more than a veneer of legitimacy for what was, in fact, a fundamentally flawed process,” the group said in a statement.
How the end came
Friday 29 December
11.44am: [all times are Iraqi]: Officials are reported to have asked for Saddam’s belongings to be collected from the US military prison where he is held.
3.21pm: Najib Nuaimi, a Saddam defence lawyer, says he believes the execution will take place on Saturday.
5.54pm: Iraqi officials dismiss claims Saddam will be hanged this weekend.
10.31pm: Munir Haddad, a judge authorised to attend the execution, says it will take place no later than Saturday.
Saturday 30 December
1.46am: The Associated Press reports that official witnesses are gathering in Baghdad’s Green Zone for Saddam’s execution.
5.45am approx: Saddam is led to the gallows and a noose is lowered over his neck. He repeats an Islamic statement of faith. A trapdoor is released and Saddam is hanged.
7.56am: US President George Bush describes Saddam’s execution as “the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime”.
2.22pm: A spokesperson for Saddam’s daughters, Raghad and Rana, says: “They felt very proud as they saw their father facing his executioners so bravely, standing up.”
4.02pm: An aide to Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki tells Reuters: “The body of Saddam Hussein will most probably be buried in a secret place in Iraq.”
6.07pm: Saddam’s Baath Party exhorts Iraqis to “strike without mercy” at the US occupiers and Iran to avenge the execution but warns them not to be drawn into civil war.
6.31pm: Saudi Arabia criticises Iraq’s leaders for executing Saddam during the Islamic religious festival of Eid.
10.12pm: Defence lawyer Bushra al-Khalil claims Saddam’s body was flown to his home town of Tikrit.
12.28am: Saddam’s family insist he will be buried in Ramadi. – Guardian Unlimited Â