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Saddam faces gallows
for village massacre
By Dave Clark
Agance France Presse, Thursday, November 2, 2006
BAGHDAD (AFP) - More than three-and-a-half years
after Iraqis cheered the fall of Saddam
Hussein's statue, the ousted dictator's own end
will probably draw a little closer Sunday with
the verdict in his first trial.
"It won't be long," Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki promised Iraq last month, displaying a
better grasp of the political significance of
the drama than the niceties of due process or
the independence of the judiciary.
"An execution order on this criminal despot and
his criminal aides will be passed soon," he
said. "His execution will remove the playing
card on which those who want to be back in power
are betting."
Maliki might have jumped the gun, but few would
indeed bet on anything other than a death
sentence when Saddam and his seven co-defendants
file back into the cramped courtroom of the
Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad.
In the first of several probes into the brutal
excesses of Saddam's 24-year reign, the former
strongman stands accused of ordering the
destruction of the small Shiite community of
Dujail, 60 kilometres (36 miles) north of
Baghdad.
Saddam survived an assassination attempt by
members of Maliki's Dawa party in Dujail in
1982, and responded with his customary vigour. A
kangaroo court was set up, the village's
orchards destroyed and 148 civilians executed.
Twenty-four years and three wars later, Maliki
and his supporters have their chance to finish
the job and kill Saddam once and for all.
The once untouchable tyrant has been imprisoned
at a US military base and forced to listen to
accusers list the crimes carried out by his
regime.
And an Iraq once mesmerized by his daily court
appearances has turned off its televisions, with
shell-shocked citizens more concerned by the
daily struggle to survive in a country that has
become a sectarian battlefield.
Thinner, bearded and shorn of his trademark
military uniform, the 69-year-old still blusters
from the dock, but appears to finally have
grasped his powerlessness as the new regime's
judicial machinery grinds on.
Ironically, however, his execution may come
about just as his support among his former
subjects makes a faint revival among a Sunni
minority tired of war and chaos and nostalgic
for the uncompromising former order.
Last month, the leaders of Sunni tribal groups
held a rally in the desert outside the city of
Kirkuk, waving pictures of Saddam in his former
pomp and demanding the release of their
"legitimate president."
A Saddam comeback is of course unthinkable in a
country still occupied by 150,000 US troops and
largely controlled by Shiite militias and armed
forces bitterly opposed to anyone connected to
the former regime.
But Maliki's government isn't going to take any
chances.
"Article 27, item 2 of the law says that if a
verdict of execution is final and binding, it
will be implemented within 30 days," the
tribunal's implacable chief prosecutor, Jaafar
al-Musawi, told AFP.
First, of course, there would be an appeal. This
would begin within 30 days of Sunday's expected
verdict and take "two weeks or two months."
Some hope that the execution would then be put
on hold until Saddam is judged in a current
trial for his role in the alleged genocide
committed against Iraq's Kurdish minority during
the 1988 Anfal campaign.
Musawi and Maliki are not in this camp.
"The court should not wait for other cases.
Judicial procedures shall stop against the dead
and shall continue against those still alive,"
Musawi said.
"We are faced with a law. If the execution
verdict is final and binding, it should be
implemented regardless of the wish of anyone."
What will this mean for Iraq?
Saddam's defence lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi,
thinks there will be trouble.
"This decision will set the country ablaze again
and plunge the entire region into the unknown,"
he warned Sunday, in an open letter to US
President George W. Bush demanding that the
verdict be postponed.
The hearing might yet be delayed by a week or
two, but the most likely outcome is that a
Kurdish judge, Rauf Rashid Abdel Rahman, will on
Sunday bring an end to a trial that began more
than a year ago on October 19, 2005.
In all likelihood, Saddam will then have only
months to live.
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