Saddam executed
Ousted former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was executed Saturday,
officials said, the 69-year-old former strongman mounting the gallows
calmly and accepting his fate with a last defiant warning.
"He said 'I hope you will be united. I was not afraid of anyone,"
Judge Moneer Haddad, who witnessed Saddam's execution for crimes against
humanity, told AFP.
National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, told state television
the former strongman made no attempt to resist his executioners, as he
was led to the noose with his hands bound behind him.
Neither official, members of a small group of dignitaries who
formally witnessed the execution, would say exactly where the hanging
took place except that it was outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green
Zone.
Rubaie said Saddam's American jailers had handed him over to Iraqi
officials and that there had been no US personnel in the building as the
trapdoor dropped and the dictator's life was ended.
"Whether to screen it now or later is up to political leaders because
this is a sensitive issue and we do not want to excite some of our
people," he said, amid mounting sectarian tension.
Saddam's and two co-accused - his half brother and intelligence chief
Barzan Hassan al-Tikriti and revolutionary court judge Awad Ahmed
al-Bandar were convicted of crimes against humanity by an Iraqi court on
November 5.
Officials said that the execution of Saddam's aides had been
postponed. |