The execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, carried out at the start of the Muslim festival, Eid al-Adha has angered Iraqis and others across the Middle East.
Saddam was hanged on what is held to be a day of mercy and feasting in the Islamic world. It is usually celebrated with the slaughter of a lamb, which represents the innocent blood of Ishmael, offered for sacrifice by his father, the prophet Abraham, to honour God.
Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, the Kurdish judge who first presided over Saddam’s trial, told reporters that the execution at the beginning of Eid was illegal under Iraqi law, besides violating the customs of Islam. Amin said that under Iraqi law “no verdict should be implemented during the official holidays or religious festivals”.
While Iraqi Shias, particularly those in the United States-backed Iraqi government, view the execution as a sign that Allah supports them, many Sunnis across Iraq and the Middle East now see Saddam as a great martyr.
“Saddam Hussein is the greatest martyr of the century,” Ahmed Hanousy, a student in Amman in Jordan said, while a 50 year-old man in Baghdad commented: “The Americans and Iranians meant to insult all Arabs by this execution.”
Others see the execution in all sorts of ways. Sabriya Salih, a 55-year-old man from Baghdad, who was evicted from his home by Shia death squads, said: “I am happy for this end. I have too much to worry about now, but look what a holy death Saddam received.”
Salih paused and added: “He died at the holiest moments of the year, with pilgrims just finishing their pilgrimage ceremonies hailing Allahu Akbar [God is greatest] as if God meant to give him that glory.”
In an official expression of anger, Libya denounced the timing of the execution and announced three days of official mourning. Eid celebrations were cancelled. The government of Saudi Arabia also condemned the timing of the execution.
Many Iraqis said they were disturbed by the footage just before the execution. “They surprised us by showing the video,” said 40-year-old Um Sammy in Baghdad. “I was busy preparing sweets for my guests when I heard my little kids crying in terror. All the children were terrified.”
A nine-year-old girl from Fallujah, who is a refugee in Baghdad, said she cried when she saw the footage on television. “Why did they do it in Eid? Why did they put it on TV to scare us?”
Later, shots of the execution taken by a witness from a cellphone showed Saddam being taunted by his executioners in his final moments. The video has exacerbated tensions between Sunnis and Shias, who follow Islam in different ways.
First broadcast by al-Jazeera on Sunday, the shots recorded someone praising Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr. Al-Sadr, founder of the Shia Dawa party and an uncle of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was executed by Saddam in 1980.
This, coupled with images of Saddam smiling at those taunting him from below the gallows, has evidently drawn widespread sympathy for Saddam. The Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars issued a statement condemning the execution.
The association said this was an execution carried out by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “for the Americans”.
The fact that those hanging Saddam praised al-Sadr is evidence that the Mehdi army militia of Moqtada al-Sadr controls at least a large portion of Iraq’s security forces. This underscores Sunni views that the security forces have been deeply infiltrated by Shia militias.
A member of Saddam’s defence team, Najib al-Nuaimi, told reporters the day after the execution that no Sunni lawyer was allowed among the witnesses at the execution. “This is not within normal procedures,” al-Nuaimi said. He added that the execution was an act of revenge and carried out for political purposes.
“It is rather stupid of those in government and their American allies,” a Sunni cleric in Ramadi said. “They gifted Saddam the best death at the best moment of the year and enlisted him a hero by all measures.”
Others were deeply offended by the move. A garbage collector who gave his name as Ali said he wept when he heard the news. “How could there be killing on such a day,” he said. “He was 69 years old, and they could have just left him to die in his jail for God’s sake.”
So far, violence continues unabated across Iraq following the execution. The US military has been placed on high alert in anticipation of retaliatory attacks. — IPS
‘What is good for us is not good for you’
At 3.30am last Saturday, I was abruptly woken by the phone. My heart sank. By the time I reached it, I was already imagining bodies of relatives and friends, killed and mutilated, writes artist and novelist Haifa Zangana.
It was 6.30am in Baghdad and I thought of the last time I spoke to my sister. She was on the roof of her house trying to get a better signal on her cellphone, but had to end the call as an American helicopter started hovering above. Iraqis know it is within the United States “rules of engagement” to shoot at anyone using cellphones, and that US troops enjoy impunity. But the call was from a Turkish TV station asking for comments on Saddam’s execution. I drew a sigh of relief, not for the execution, but because I did not personally know anyone killed that day.
Death is now so common in Iraq that we end up ranking it in these personal terms. About 500 academics and 92 journalists have been murdered since the invasion of Iraq. Hundreds more have been kidnapped, and many have fled the country. The human costs are so high that many Iraqis believe that had there been a competition between Saddam’s regime and the Bush-Blair occupation over the killing of Iraqi minds and culture, the latter would win. Sadly, I am becoming one of them.
I am speaking as one who has been, from the start, an active opponent of the Ba’ath regime’s ideology and Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. At times that was at the high personal cost of prison and torture. But I find myself agreeing with many Iraqis, that life now is not just the continuity of misery and death under new guises. It is much, much worse.
The timing and method of the execution of Saddam proves that the US administration is still criminally high on the cocktail of power, arrogance, and ignorance. But above all, racism: what is good for us is not good for you. We are patriots but you are terrorists.
The US and their Iraqi puppets in the green zone chose to execute Saddam on the first day of Eid al-Adha. They then further humiliated Muslims by releasing the official video of the execution. The unofficial recording shows Saddam looking calm and composed, and even managing a sarcastic smile, asking the thugs who taunted him “hiya hiy al marjala?” [is this your manliness?], a powerful phrase in Arabic culture connecting manliness to acts of courage, pride and chivalry.
He also managed to say the Muslim creed repeatedly as he was dying, thus attaching himself in the last few seconds of his life to one billion Muslims. Saddam had literally the final say. From now on, no Eid will pass without people remembering his execution.
This was the climax of a colonial farce with the court proceedings’ blatant sectarian overtones welcomed by George W Bush and the British government as a “fair trial”. The occupation also welcomed the grotesque public execution as “justice being done”. Contrast this with the end of our hopes, as Iraqis in opposition, of persuading our people of the humanity of democracy and how it would, unlike Saddam’s brutality, put an end to all abuses of human rights.
It is hell in Iraq by all standards, and there is no end in sight to the plight of Iraqi people. The resistance to occupation is a basic human right as well as a moral responsibility. That was the case during the Algerian war of independence, the Vietnamese war, and it is the case in Iraq now. — Â