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Post by Slim K team on Dec 29, 2006 20:18:12 GMT -8
 [glow=red,2,300] BREAKING NEWS: Saddam Hussein executed (1 hour ago..)[/glow]  • NEW: Official: "Saddam's body is in front me. It's over."
• NEW: Witnesses report people "dancing around the body"
• Hussein lawyers lost last-minute appeal in U.S. court
• No details on where execution took place
Saddam Hussein was hanged Saturday (Dec. 30th 2006) for crimes committed in a brutal crackdown during his reign, U.S. and Iraqi sources tell CNN. The former Iraqi dictator spent his last years in captivity after his ruthless Baathist regime was toppled from power by the U.S.-led coalition in 2003.
more Breaking: Saddam Hussein Executed (NEWS) |
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Post by Slim K team on Dec 29, 2006 20:25:09 GMT -8
 [glow=red,2,300] Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein executed at 69[/glow] By Borzou Daragahi and David Lamb, Special to The Times
7:25 PM PST, December 29, 2006
Saddam Hussein, who ruled Iraq with ruthless force and led his people into three devastating wars while pursuing his goal of dominating the Arab world, was executed by hanging . He was 69.
Whether as president of Iraq, a self-proclaimed leader of the anti-American insurgency or rambunctious courtroom defendant, Hussein cast a large shadow over world events and the nation that he controlled for most of the last 40 years.
Though never an army officer, he frequently wore military uniforms and styled himself as a fearless strategist and warrior. The wars he started cost more than 1 million lives, but he never won any of them and lived in constant fear, seldom sleeping in the same palace two nights in a row and employing look-alikes to foil assassination attempts.
Nearly four years after U.S.-led forces toppled his Baath Party regime and a little more than three years after he was caught hiding in a hole in the ground near his hometown, his death further shuts the door on an era of secular Arab nationalism, now being eclipsed throughout the Middle East by Islamist ideas and leaders.
Hussein took with him to the grave a trove of secrets. The former Iraqi leader allegedly ordered assassinations abroad and used his country's vast oil wealth to curry favor with Middle Eastern governments while maintaining undercover dealings with intelligence services throughout the region and the West.
One famous photograph shows Hussein in 1983 shaking hands with Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former Defense secretary who served as an informal envoy to Baghdad at a time when the United States was aiding Iraq in its eight-year war with Iran.
For his country, now convulsed in civil war, Hussein's most lasting and damaging legacy was the way his selective patronage and brutal violence divided Iraqis along lines that continue to haunt them.
Hussein moved rivers to reward Sunni Arab villagers loyal to his government and drained swamps to punish Shiite Muslims who rose up against him. He moved rebellious Kurds from the northern city of Kirkuk while selling cheap land in the city to Arabs to reward loyalists and upend the ethnic balance of the country's oil-rich north.
He imprisoned tens of thousands, ordered the killings of political enemies, real and imagined, including two of his sons-in-law, and used poison gas to wipe out whole villages in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. He granted construction contracts to favored Arab tribes, while depriving whole categories of people — such as Shiite Kurds — of their citizenship rights.
Such violence and manipulations may have established a semblance of stability. But they also built up a sense of entitlement by Sunnis and resentments on the part of Shiites and Kurds that fueled violence by death squads, militias and insurgents once the U.S. invasion of 2003 toppled his regime.
Hussein fostered a grotesque cult of personality around himself as the embodiment of the Iraqi state and all of Iraqi history. As he consolidated absolute power in the 1980s, his face and figure went up all over the country. Here was Hussein on horseback. There he was in Kurdish costume. His likeness adorned the walls of every cafe, bank and government office. Hussein's initials were inscribed on the stones used to rebuild ancient archeological sites.
"With our souls, with our blood, we will sacrifice for you, Saddam," schoolchildren, old women and office workers chanted whenever Hussein arrived.
The result was a culture of dependence and subservience to the state that has plagued efforts to rebuild Iraq. To date, other than Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, not a single Iraqi who suffered through Hussein's final years of rule has emerged as a credible political leader. Perhaps the most telling illustration of Hussein's influence on Iraq is that nearly all of post-invasion Iraq's leadership has been culled from among exiles.
Humble origins
Saddam Hussein Abdul-Majid Tikriti was born into a poor Sunni household on April 28, 1937, to a family of peasants in the tiny mud-hut village of Al Auja, near the city of Tikrit on the Tigris River about 100 miles north of Baghdad. His father, Hussein Majid, died within a year of his birth, and his mother, Subha, married a man named Ibrahim Hassan.
Young Hussein earned money by selling watermelons to railroad passengers heading through town. When he was 10, apparently to escape his abusive stepfather, Hussein ran away from home and went to live with his uncle Khayrallah Tulfah, a former general who had been dismissed from the army for supporting a coup attempt.
By then, Tulfah was an embittered man, eking out an existence as a schoolteacher in Baghdad. He was also anti-Western, a fascist and a Sunni chauvinist. The influence he exerted over Hussein can be inferred in part from the title of a pamphlet the uncle wrote and Hussein had published years later: "Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews and Flies."
At his uncle's instigation, Hussein committed his first killing while still in his teens. The victim was Saadoun Tikriti, a communist supporter of Gen. Abdul Karim Qassim, who later became Iraq's prime minister. He also happened to be Hussein's brother-in-law.
Hussein came of age in the late 1950s, a time of post-colonial change as Arab nationalism arose to challenge governments set up by the British and French. Like many Arabs, Hussein was inspired by the vision of a pan-Arab Middle East propagated by the charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser, who became president of Egypt in 1956.
That same year, Hussein took part in a coup against Iraq's King Faisal II. The coup failed. But Hussein became a feared figure in the Iraqi political underground. In 1957, at age 20, he joined the Iraqi branch of the Baath Party, a secular, pan-Arab political movement founded in Syria in the 1940s that combined elements of socialism and Nazism. |
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Post by Slim K team on Dec 29, 2006 20:28:14 GMT -8
 [glow=red,2,300] Saddam im Morgengrauen gehängt[/glow]  Saddam Hussein wurde heute morgen gehängt. Das Todesurteil gegen den früheren Diktator sei in Bagdad um 6 Uhr Ortszeit (4 Uhr MEZ) vollstreckt worden, meldete das staatliche irakische Fernsehen. mehr... Zum Tode verurteilte Despoten: Einige entkamen der Hinrichtung Ermittlungen gegen Linde: Verdacht auf Schmiergeldzahlungen im Irak Irak: Zehn Tote bei Anschlag auf Schiiten Irak: US-Regierung erwägt Truppenverstärkung |
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Post by Slim K team on Dec 29, 2006 20:32:10 GMT -8
 [glow=red,2,300] صدام أعدم شنقا[/glow]  شقيقة صدام حذرت من كارثة في حال إعدامه (رويترز-أرشيف)
أكدت مصادر رسمية عراقية أن حكم الإعدام نفذ في الرئيس العراقي المخلوع صدام حسين قبل الساعة السادسة صباح اليوم بتوقيت مكة المكرمة، وأن عملية الإعدام جرى تصويرها.
وصدر بيان في بغداد يؤكد تنفيذ الإعدام بحق صدام وأخيه غير الشقيق برزان التكريتي وعواد البندر.
وكان مسؤول عراقي مقرب من رئيس الوزراء نوري المالكي قال في وقت سابق إن حكم الإعدام سينفذ بصدام حسين قبل الساعة السادسة صباح اليوم بتوقيت مكة المكرمة.
وأضاف أن هذا التوقيت جرى الاتفاق عليه في اجتماع بين مسؤولين عراقيين وأميركيين. وقال إن الجانب الأميركي سيسلم الرئيس المخلوع إلى الجانب العراقي قبل وقت قصير من إعدامه.
وكان العضو في محكمة التمييز العراقية منير حداد قد أعلن أن كافة الإجراءات قد اكتملت من أجل تنفيذ حكم الإعدام بحق صدام حسين في قضية الدجيل ولم تتبق إلا عملية التنفيذ. وفي تصريحات للجزيرة أشار حداد إلى أن صدام حسين في طور الاستلام من قبل الحكومة العراقية، وفق تعبيره.
وأوضح أن هيئة الرئاسة العراقية غير معنية بتنفيذ الحكم وليس بوسعها تخفيفه أو تعديله، وفي رده على سؤال للجزيرة عن إعلانه عن إعدام الرئيس العراقي المخلوع اليوم السبت وتعارضه مع عطلة عيد الأضحي قال عضو محكمة التمييز العراقية إن العيد في العراق يبدأ الأحد.
أما خليل الدليمي رئيس فريق الدفاع عن الرئيس العراقي المخلوع فقال إن الأميركيين سلموا صدام للجانب العراقي تمهيدا لإعدامه، وإن فريق الدفاع تقدم بالتماس لوقف تنفيذ الحكم.
وأضاف الدليمي أن الأميركيين اتصلوا به لتسليمه المتعلقات الشخصية للرئيس المخلوع وأخيه برزان وأنهم طلبوا من فريق الدفاع إلغاء زيارة كانت مقررة السبت لبغداد.
مناشدات وتحذير
وقد حذرت أم حيدر أخت الرئيس العراقي المخلوع صدام حسين من وقوع ما وصفتها بكارثة في العراق في حال تنفيذ حكم الإعدام الصادر بحقه.
وفي اتصال سابق مع الجزيرة أشارت إلى اتصالات أجرتها أسرة صدام حسين بمسؤولين عرب من أجل التدخل، وقالت إنهم كانوا مقدرين لخطورة الوضع في العراق، وناشدت أم حيدر الرؤساء العرب وأمير دولة قطر التدخل لوقف تنفيذ حكم الإعدام.
كما ناشد حيدر الناصري ابن أخت صدام حسين أمير دولة قطر الشيخ حمد بن خليفة آل ثاني وعاهل المملكة العربية السعودية عبد الله بن عبد العزيز التدخل لوقف ما وصفه بالحكم الجائر على صدام حسين، وقال الناصري إن عائلة صدام تطالب بلقائه قبل تنفيذ الحكم عليه.
وقالت مصادر يمنية مطلعة إن رغد صدام حسين ابنة الرئيس العراقي المخلوع طلبت من السلطات اليمنية التدخل لدى سلطات الاحتلال في العراق لتسلم جثة والدها بعد إعدامه إلى أسرته المقيمة في اليمن لدفنه في صنعاء.
وأضافت المصادر أن رغد صدام حسين طلبت دفن والدها في اليمن مؤقتا في انتظار إعادته إلى العراق بعد جلاء الاحتلال عنه.
من جانبه وصف الزعيم الليبي معمر القذافي محاكمة صدام حسين بالباطلة، وقال إن صدام أسير حرب لا يمكن محاكمته بتحريم من المواثيق الدولية. وأضاف القذافي أن بريطانيا وأميركا هما من تجب محاكمتهما في هذه القضية.
وفي واشنطن أعلنت وزارة العدل الأميركية أن محامي الرئيس صدام حسين طلبوا من القضاء الأميركي منع تسليمه إلى السلطات العراقية التي تستعد لتنفيذ حكم الإعدام بحقه.
وقال المتحدث باسم الوزارة تشارلز ميلر إن المحامين سلموا وثائق إلى محكمة واشنطن الفدرالية تطالب بالحيلولة دون قيام الجيش الأميركي الذي يتولى حاليا حراسة صدام حسين بتسليمه إلى السلطات العراقية.
وأكدت متحدثة باسم المحكمة الفدرالية أن الوثائق قد سلمت وأن المحامين يطلبون "وقفا مؤقتا" لتسليمه. |
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