posted
Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 59 minutes ago
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The scene was at once macabre and riveting.
One of the most notorious dictators of the late 20th century, his hands bound behind him, was led up the stairs of the gallows by masked men in leather coats. A few seconds later, a trapdoor snapped open and with a crash Saddam was dead.
He may have been the first chief of state executed in the age of the Internet and the camera phone. Probably because of that, his death was graphically documented on video, and available worldwide, within hours.
By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, exchanging taunts and accusations with the crowd gathered to watch him die insisting that he was Iraq's savior, not its tyrant and scourge.
State television did not broadcast footage of the actual hanging. But camera phone video, posted in full or in part on several Web sites, picked up where the TV coverage left off.
In the videos, Saddam calmly recited verses from the Quran in a calm, clear voice as the trap door opened.
Finally, his body can be seen swinging in the dim light his neck apparently snapped.
Saddam had reportedly asked that, as Iraq's commander in chief, he be sent before a firing squad. Instead, he was condemned to die on the gallows as though he were a garden variety murderer.
The 69-year-old former president struggled briefly as the U.S. military, which had custody of Saddam, handed him over to the Iraqis, said Sami al-Askari, a political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Saddam did not wear his familiar military uniform with its jaunty beret but a black coat over a white shirt, black trousers and black shoes. His jet black hair was carefully combed, his salt-and-pepper beard neatly clipped.
From that moment on, his last acts of defiance, it seems, consisted of verbal jousting and silent contempt.
Saddam was taken to a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, in northern Baghdad. During his regime, he had numerous dissidents executed in the facility.
Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that Saddam was not sedated.
"Not at all, Saddam was normal and in full control," Haddad said. "He was aware of his fate and he knew he was about to face death. He said, 'This is my end, this is the end of my life, but I started my life as a fighter and as a political militant so death does not frighten me.'"
After his captors brought Saddam into the execution chamber, his hands which were tied in front of him were untied, then tied in the back, Haddad told the BBC.
"He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians," Haddad told the BBC.
The New York Times reported that Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser for Iraq, stood next to Saddam before he mounted the scaffold, and asked him if he felt remorse and fear.
"No," the Times quoted Saddam saying. "I am a militant and I have no fear for myself. I have spent my life in jihad and fighting aggression. Anyone who takes this route should not be afraid."
Al-Rubaie told the Times that one of the guards grew angry. "You have destroyed us," he reportedly shouted. "You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution."
"I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans," Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times.
"God damn you," the guard said.
"God damn you," Saddam said, according to the Times.
A silent, minute-long video that aired on Iraqi television showed Saddam on the scaffold. He seemed to have little to say, and his eyes appeared lost in a 1,000-yard stare.
Four or five burly men guided him gently but firmly toward a red metal railing marking the trap door. A thick rope hung like a sinister vine from the low ceiling. An unseen photographer's flash created fleeting stark shadows.
With a blank expression, Saddam refused a black hood but he did so with a shake of his head that seemed more distracted than defiant.
Then he appeared to agree to let one of his executioners tie a black scarf around his neck. The Times reported that his guards explained the rope could cut off his head, and offered to protect his neck with the scarf.
In the televised video, Saddam stood stoically as the noose was slipped over his head. The noose was tightened. Then the Iraqi TV footage ended.
But the camera phone video, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera and aired in full on Arabic-language Web sites, continued.
In the video, one of those attending the execution called out praise for Dawa Party founder and Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, who was executed along with his sister by Saddam in 1980. The Islamic party has been locked in a fierce decades-old battle with Saddam's now outlawed secular Baath party. Muqtada al-Sadr, the powerful and radical Shiite cleric in Iraq, is a distant relative of the Dawa founder.
Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows, and said they were not showing their manhood.
Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger.
"Saddam did so but with sarcasm," Haddad said. But to others, Saddam's tone sounded calm and measured, neither sarcastic nor frightened.
Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad, according to a translation by the Associated Press.
The floor dropped out of the gallows, there was a crash and the chamber erupted in shouting.
"The tyrant has fallen," someone called. The video showed a close-up of Saddam's face as he swung from the rope.
Then came another voice: "Let him swing for three minutes."
Asked if Saddam suffered, Haddad told the BBC: "He was killed instantly, I witnessed the impact of the rope around his neck and it was a horrible sight."
Iraqi television broadcasts included a shaky image of the aftermath: a shot of what appeared to be Saddam's corpse, laid out on a hospital gurney, his head wrenched grotesquely to the right. His neck appeared to be bruised.
Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were originally scheduled to be hanged along with their former leader.
Iraqi officials, though, decided to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone.
Posts: 1474 | From: in my own paradise | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
You can't believe anything you read or see anymore.
Posts: 3595 | From: Moved To Mars. Waiting with shotgun | Registered: Dec 2006
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posted
Tell me about it,I didn't see this on al-jazeera and didn't hear any sound, AL-JAZEERA said that the tape run out and i would have thought that AL-JAZEERA being what they are would've shown it, same as the IRAQI news stations!!!
I'm skeptical, The BBC, SKY and CNN announced that they weren't going to show it.
I've been looking online and haven't come across anything yet. Who knows
-------------------- Learn from the past. Live in the present. Hope for the future. Posts: 1474 | From: in my own paradise | Registered: Sep 2006
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THIS IS SO DISGUSTING! I DID NOT WATCH IT UNTIL THE END! STUPID AMATEURS THESE PEOPLE! I AM SPEECHLESS!!!!!!! Posts: 30135 | From: The owner of this website killed ES....... | Registered: Feb 2004
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WOT DID YOU EXPECT?? A QUALIFIED CAMERA CREW??? IT WAS FILMED ON A MOBILE PHONE. I'M CURIOUS AS TO WHY IT'S FROM THE 'OTHER' ANGLE
-------------------- Learn from the past. Live in the present. Hope for the future. Posts: 1474 | From: in my own paradise | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
These films are being recorded and released with a purpose in mind. First the shock value of 911, followed by shock value of beheadings, now a hanging. Next we'll get to see one of those ole time British executions where the captive is staked, slow roasted over coals while his intestines are pulled and roasted. Inspite of the captive already being dead, they always finished the job up with a good quartering. Wonder if they're developing a new form of pay-per-view?
Posts: 3595 | From: Moved To Mars. Waiting with shotgun | Registered: Dec 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Am I bovvered(WOTEVER): WOT DID YOU EXPECT?? A QUALIFIED CAMERA CREW??? IT WAS FILMED ON A MOBILE PHONE. I'M CURIOUS AS TO WHY IT'S FROM THE 'OTHER' ANGLE
You didn't get my point. No one should have been allowed using private phones inside the execution room. People should have been searched throughly. Hell and I am sure money was running towards this person who filmed that. Amateurs - as usual the total chaos in Iraq!
Posts: 30135 | From: The owner of this website killed ES....... | Registered: Feb 2004
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I must admit curiosity got the best of me and I had to watch it!! But hey, seems it has been viewed OVER 2 MILLION TIMES ALREADY!!!!
Posts: 895 | From: Atlanta, GA. | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Tigerlily: THIS IS SO DISGUSTING! I DID NOT WATCH IT UNTIL THE END! STUPID AMATEURS THESE PEOPLE! I AM SPEECHLESS!!!!!!!
agree with you Tiger, Death to Bush and his assholes for allowing this to happen
I never like Saddam but I start to like him now after what happened in Iraq ,I can't belive this allowing such an assholes to teaze him while he is getting execution by saying : (TO HEAL) and another asshole start to call the name of the criminal (Moktada , moktada) but look to the reaction of the great martyr when smile to them and said : that's not an act of the real men ... OH My god , the man giving lesson even while execution ... THE GREAT MARTYR SADDAM HUESSIN WILL LIVE IN OUR HEARTS FOREVER.
Posts: 238 | Registered: May 2006
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No one can accuse me of sympathy for Saddam or his fellow thugs who terrorized Iraq. But I was thoroughly disgusted and ashamed by the kangaroo court created and stage-managed by the U.S. that condemned Saddam.
It was a disgraceful farrago of Soviet-style show trial and judicial circus. Washington, which claimed to be bringing the fruits of democracy to the benighted Arab World, put on a sinister legal farce worthy of, ironically, Saddam's courts.
Iraq's deposed president, whom Osama bin Laden called "the worst Arab despot" should have faced real justice at an international legal tribunal like the UN Hague Court. That would have served warning to other despots who violated human rights and committed aggression.
The United States did right to hand over Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague. But Saddam had to be silenced before he told the world about his long collusion with the United States. Dead men tell no tales.
Saddam's biggest crime was not killing rebellious Kurds or Shia. As ruler of the unnatural, British-created Frankenstein state Iraq, Saddam was forced to keep putting down rebellions.
Saintly Winston Churchill authorized the RAF to bomb Iraq's rebellious Kurdish tribesmen with poison gas exactly as Saddam later did. Saddam's most brutal repression of Kurds and Shia occurred when they revolted during Iraq's wars with Iran and the U.S.
Saddam should have faced trial for his unprovoked 1980 aggression against Iran that ended up causing one million dead and wounded.
But in this crime, Saddam was covertly backed by his principal accomplices, the U.S. and Britain. Donald Rumsfeld even went to Baghdad to offer Saddam arms, finance and intelligence. Hanging Saddam eliminated the main witness.
Saddam was helped into power by the CIA, which stood by while he slaughtered Iraqi communists and Nasserites.
The U.S. and Britain, as I discovered in Baghdad in 1990, supplied Saddam with poison gas and germs to make battlefield weapons (these were not "weapons of mass destruction." The germs were never successfully weaponized).
So long as Saddam was killing and torturing people America and Britain did not like, he was "our SOB."
But when Saddam grew too big for his britches and invaded Kuwait, he went from being the West's regional bullyboy to devil No. 1.
Once he touched the West's oil in Kuwait, he was marked for death.
Some of the tame U.S. media have been spinning Saddam's execution as a justification for the Bush/Cheney administration's unprovoked invasion of Iraq, without ever asking why Saddam was an ally in 1988 yet a devil in 1991 and again in 2003.
Nor has there been much reporting that under Saddam, Iraq became the Arab world's most industrialized nation, a leader in women's rights, medical care, education, and public projects.
Back in 2003, I predicted that once the U.S. got rid of old pal Saddam, it would look for another Saddam-clone to replace him. The mutant state of Iraq and its feuding peoples can only be ruled by an iron fist. Saddam's greatest error was believing he had frightened Iraqis into a national unity that would support invasions of his neighbours. He was dead wrong.
There are plenty of other brutal regimes that rival Saddam's Iraq for nastiness. Most are close U.S. allies. As Henry Kissinger once quipped, being America's ally is far more dangerous than being its enemy.
After jubilation among Shia and Kurds over Saddam's execution subsides, Iraq will return to its daily bloody chaos. Saddam called himself a martyr. In years to come, many Arabs will forget his many crimes and remember him as a flawed hero and martyr who dared challenge the United States and Israel, and paid the price for his audacity.
Posts: 315 | Registered: Dec 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Am I bovvered(WOTEVER): WOT DID YOU EXPECT?? A QUALIFIED CAMERA CREW??? IT WAS FILMED ON A MOBILE PHONE. I'M CURIOUS AS TO WHY IT'S FROM THE 'OTHER' ANGLE
You didn't get my point. No one should have been allowed using private phones inside the execution room. People should have been searched throughly. Hell and I am sure money was running towards this person who filmed that. Amateurs - as usual the total chaos in Iraq!
It was planned. Even the camera-phone part (I believe). The execution landed on the exact same day as Eid. The execution was not done in proper Islamic format (slicing the head). The trapdoor was released (he was hung) while Saddam was reciting his last prayers (shahada).
I also heard the guy standing next to him say something along the lines of 'ala jahanum'. I don't speak Arabic, but I am assuming he was saying: you are going to hell ? I'd really appreciate it, if you guys could provide me with the exact translations of the words that were spoken by the people around him. I am writing a paper on the current situation in Iraq, and this addition would be great. Thanks alot!
Posts: 11 | From: Canada | Registered: Dec 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Tigerlily: THIS IS SO DISGUSTING! I DID NOT WATCH IT UNTIL THE END! STUPID AMATEURS THESE PEOPLE! I AM SPEECHLESS!!!!!!!
This pretty much sums it up! Saddam didn't care much for the dignity of those killed under his regime but his execution should have been handled with great care. The political chants were especially distasteful. I can understand the reaction of the grieving loved ones of victims at an execution but this was different. The incompetence of these people in handling such a high profile execution is staggering.
Posts: 2953 | From: Slightly south of Azkaban. | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Army of Khorasan: As-Salaamu Alaikum
quote:Originally posted by Tigerlily:
quote:Originally posted by Am I bovvered(WOTEVER): WOT DID YOU EXPECT?? A QUALIFIED CAMERA CREW??? IT WAS FILMED ON A MOBILE PHONE. I'M CURIOUS AS TO WHY IT'S FROM THE 'OTHER' ANGLE
You didn't get my point. No one should have been allowed using private phones inside the execution room. People should have been searched throughly. Hell and I am sure money was running towards this person who filmed that. Amateurs - as usual the total chaos in Iraq!
It was planned. Even the camera-phone part (I believe). The execution landed on the exact same day as Eid. The execution was not done in proper Islamic format (slicing the head). The trapdoor was released (he was hung) while Saddam was reciting his last prayers (shahada).
I also heard the guy standing next to him say something along the lines of 'ala jahanum'. I don't speak Arabic, but I am assuming he was saying: you are going to hell ? I'd really appreciate it, if you guys could provide me with the exact translations of the words that were spoken by the people around him. I am writing a paper on the current situation in Iraq, and this addition would be great. Thanks alot!
Army,
here are the translation:
Saddam: ya Allh (Calling God) (OH GOD) Asshole 1: Ela Juhanam (To Heal) Saddam: (smile) Huh,,,, hay Elmargala? means (that's not the act of real men!) he means it's not manly to teaze a man tied hands and legs and getting hanged. Asshole 2: Allahom sali 3ala mohamed we3ala 2l mohamed (common Doaa(Do3a2) for Sunnis and Shiaaa.
Asshole ? : Live the martyr MOHAMED BAKER ALSADR
Voice: please all. stop doing this, the man (saddam) in Execution, please stop.........
Saddam: saying (shehada) for last time and was not even finished .... Posts: 238 | Registered: May 2006
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I don't have the link but I read something just today that someone was arrested for filming the execution on his cell phone.
-------------------- "And in the end, the love we take will be equal to the love we make." ~The Beatles~ Posts: 895 | From: Atlanta, GA. | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by foreignluvr: I don't have the link but I read something just today that someone was arrested for filming the execution on his cell phone.
posted
I can't take this image out of my head (Saddam Execution) Oh my god , he was a real man and so brave.........
He refused to cover his eyes , he was steel and strong , he smiled ..... he remined me with the hanging of the great warrior (OMAR MOKHTAR)....
Posts: 238 | Registered: May 2006
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