Saddam Hussein executed in Iraq
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Saddam Hussein executed in Iraq
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging at a secure facility in northern Baghdad for crimes against humanity.The news was confirmed to the BBC by the Iraqi deputy foreign minister.
Iraqi TV said the execution took place just before 0600 local time (0300GMT). A representative of the prime minister and a Sunni Muslim cleric were present.
Two co-defendants, Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and a former chief judge, are to be executed at a later date.
All three were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November after a year-long trial over the 1982 killings of 148 Shias in the town of Dujail.
So, Saddam Hussein has finally gone. Yet, with all the horrendous crimes he was accused of committing it strikes me as rather strange that they’ve rushed through his execution for a crime that, in his scale of misdeeds, was relatively minor.
Why not put a stay on the execution till he could be tried for all the many other crimes he’d been accused of committing.
It couldn’t be anything to do with the probability that, were his trials to have continued for a protracted period then yet more facts might have emerged (other than Saddam’s own rhetoric) about the complicity of the West in his crimes - could it? No, surely not.
Or are all the other accusations that have been made against him to go untried and untested in a court of law (even such a mockery of a “court of law” as that which tried Hussein) - so that they will remain forever unchallenged? Mighty convenient for the West.
Of course, the verdict and the sentence were a foregone conclusion.
And another foregone conclusion: I’ve been watching BBC News 24 throughout the early hours of this morning, part of which was devoted to a potted history of Saddam’s rise to power, and some of the events that led to today’s execution.
Thoroughly disgusted by their cherry-picking of the facts, at least it gives us a foretaste of what shape the “official history” will take. No surprises there either.
The only question remaining - now that everyone’s crowing about Saddam having finally been made accountable for his crimes - is when Bush and Blair will likewise been made accountable for the devastation they have wrought upon the peoples of Iraq?
Here’s an interesting link…
The Misguided Execution of Saddam Hussein
And another one…
Demand Accountability for U.S./Israeli War Crimes in Lebanon and Palestine
