Saddam not hanged 'for revenge'
By Shirley Blair,WNS Baghdad Correspondent
BAGHDAD - Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's execution on Saturday was not an act of revenge, Iraqi officials say. "This whole execution is about justice," Hiwa Osman, an adviser for the Iraqi president said. Mr Osman's remarks come after new video filmed on a mobile phone showed a man taunting Saddam Hussein on the gallows. Correspondents say the manner of the execution may exacerbate divisions in Iraq between supporters and opponents of the former leader.
The country experienced yet another day of violence on Sunday with a car bomb killing one and injuring at least six in Baghdad's northern Hurriyah neighbourhood, AFP reports. Police said they had found 12 bodies dumped in the capital on Sunday, according to the Associated Press, a relatively low number by recent standards. A further four corpses - two women and two men - were also reported to have been found in the northern city of Mosul, AFP reports. Meanwhile, scores of Saddam supporters have been flocking to the site where the former leader's body was buried on Sunday. The former president, 69, was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November over the killings of 148 Shias from the town of Dujail in the 1980s.
The country experienced yet another day of violence on Sunday with a car bomb killing one and injuring at least six in Baghdad's northern Hurriyah neighbourhood, AFP reports. Police said they had found 12 bodies dumped in the capital on Sunday, according to the Associated Press, a relatively low number by recent standards. A further four corpses - two women and two men - were also reported to have been found in the northern city of Mosul, AFP reports. Meanwhile, scores of Saddam supporters have been flocking to the site where the former leader's body was buried on Sunday. The former president, 69, was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November over the killings of 148 Shias from the town of Dujail in the 1980s.
Images of Saddam Hussein being taken to the gallows in a Baghdad building his intelligence services once used for executions were broadcast on state TV on Saturday. They showed a respectful, if businesslike, team of hooded volunteers shuffling the formally dressed ex-leader onto the platform and slipping the noose over his neck. But the unofficial video images - posted on the internet and shown on Arab and Western channels - show he exchanged taunts with onlookers from the gallows. One of them shouts the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, a prominent Shia cleric. Saddam Hussein said they were not showing bravery. He is then heard citing verses from the Koran before the trapdoor opened and he died.
posted by wnsworld @ 11:15 PM
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