Saddam’s execution put Iraq's fate hanging in balance

BAGHDAD— Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn on Saturday for crimes against humanity as Iraq’s prime minister rushed through an execution that delighted victims of the former president’s harsh rule and caused resentment among those who thought the high-profile trial was flawed and unfair. The former president, toppled by the US invasion four years ago, was shown going calmly to his death on the scaffold in images of his last moments broadcast on state television.
“It was very quick. He died right away,” one official witness said, adding that the body was left to hang for 10 minutes and death was recorded at 6.10am (8.10am PST). The bearded Saddam, still robust at 69, refused a hood or to have a cleric present, but did say a brief prayer and recite the Kalma before a short drop to oblivion on gallows once used by his own secret police.
Grainy video later showed his body in a white shroud, the neck twisted and blood on a cheek. An adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki said Saddam would probably be buried in a secret grave.
Three decades after Saddam Hussein established his personal rule by force, Saturday’s execution closed a chapter in Iraq's history marked by war with Iran and a 1990 invasion of Kuwait that turned him from ally to enemy of the United States and impoverished his oil-rich nation. But, as US President George Bush said in a statement, sectarian violence pushing Iraq towards civil war has not ended.
Car bombs set off by guerrillas suspected to be from Saddam's Baath Party killed 77 people in Baghdad and near Najaf.
But Mr Maliki, his fragile authority among fellow Shias enhanced after he forced through Saddam's execution by hanging over Sunni and Kurdish hesitation just four days after his appeal failed, reached out to Saddam's Sunni followers.
“Saddam's execution puts an end to all the pathetic gambles on a return to dictatorship,” he said in a statement as state television showed film of him signing the death warrant in red ink. “I urge ... followers of the ousted regime to reconsider their stance as the door is still open to anyone who has no innocent blood on his hands to help in rebuilding ... Iraq.”
There is little prospect of peace from Al Qaeda, but Mr Maliki and Mr Bush hope that more moderate Sunnis may choose negotiation over violence. As on Nov 5, when Saddam was sentenced over the deaths of 148 people from the town of Dujail, reaction among the Sunnis was restrained. Unusually, the government did not even see a need for a curfew in Baghdad. Protests in Saddam's home town of Tikrit and in the Sunni west were small.
With violence killing hundreds every week, Iraqis have other worries. Even celebrations in predominantly Shia cities and the Sadr City slum in Baghdad were brief and fairly subdued.
“It's a great joy that I can't even express,” said Mohammad Kadhem, a journalist in Basra. “I can't believe what I'm seeing on television -- Saddam led to the gallows where he hanged tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.”
“Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself,” said President Bush, who has defended the 2003 invasion despite US troops’ failure to find alleged banned weapons.
The deaths of six more soldiers pushed the US death toll to just two short of the emotive 3,000 mark as December became the deadliest month for Americans in Iraq for over two years.
Mr Bush has promised to unveil a new strategy in the new year. The United Nations, the Vatican and Washington's European allies all condemned the execution on moral grounds.
Many Muslims, especially those in Saudi Arabia for the Haj, were also outraged by the symbolism of hanging Saddam on the holiest day of the Muslim calendar -- the start of Eidul Azha. “We heard his neck snap,” said Sami al-Askari, an adviser to Mr Maliki. The prime minister himself, who fled Iraq as a young man in fear of his life from Saddam's agents, was not present.
A witness in the Dujail trial said he was shown the body at Mr Maliki's office: “When I saw the body in the coffin, I cried. I remembered my three brothers and my father whom he had killed.”
Saddam was convicted of killing, torture and other crimes against the population of Dujail after militants from Maliki's Dawa party tried to assassinate him there in 1982.
Many Kurds were disappointed that Saddam will not now be convicted of genocide against them in a trial yet to finish.
After complaints of interference by Shia politicians in the trial, the speed of the execution may also fuel further unease about the fairness of the US-sponsored process. Saddam's half-brother Barzan al Tikriti and former judge Awad al Bander are to be hanged for the same crimes in January.