Saddam Execution Imminent

Associated Press | December 29, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein will be executed no later than Saturday, said an Iraqi judge authorized to attend his hanging. The former dictator's lawyers said he had been transferred from U.S. custody, but an Iraqi official said he was still in the hands of American guards.

The physical transfer of Saddam to Iraqi authorities was believed to be one of the last steps before he was to be hanged, although the lawyers' statement did not specifically say Saddam was in Iraqi hands.

"A few minutes ago we received correspondence from the Americans saying that President Saddam Hussein is no longer under the control of U.S. forces," according to the statement faxed to The Associated Press.

The statement said U.S. officials asked the lawyers to cancel a trip to Baghdad for a last meeting with Saddam, saying he was no longer in American custody.

Munir Haddad, a judge on the appeals court that upheld Saddam's death sentence, said he was ready to attend the execution.

"All the measures have been done," Haddad said. "There is no reason for delays."

In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has signed Saddam's death sentence, a government official said. The official, who refused to be identified by name because he was not authorized to release the information, said that Iraqi authorities were not yet in control of Saddam. The discrepancy could not be explained.

"We have agreed with the Americans that the handover will take place only a few minutes before he is executed," the official said.

The defense team statement called on "everybody to do everything to stop this unfair execution."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said opposing Saddam's execution was an insult to his victims. His office said he made the remarks in a meeting with families of people who died during Saddam's rule.

"Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him, and there will be no review or delay in carrying out the sentence," al-Maliki said.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said U.S. forces were on high alert.

"They'll obviously take into account social dimensions that could potentially led to an increase in violence which certainly would include carrying out the sentence of Saddam Hussein," Whitman said.

On Thursday, two half brothers visited Saddam in his cell, a member of the former dictator's defense team, Badee Izzat Aref, told The Associated Press by telephone from the United Arab Emirates. He said the former dictator handed them his personal belongings.

A senior commander at the Iraqi defense ministry also confirmed the meeting and said Saddam gave his will to one of his half brothers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Saddam's lawyers later issued a statement saying the Americans gave permission for his belongings to be retrieved. However, Raed Juhi, spokesman for the High Tribunal court that convicted Saddam, denied that the former leader's relatives visited him.

An Iraqi appeals court upheld Saddam's death sentence Tuesday for the killing of 148 people who were detained after an attempt to assassinate him in the northern Iraqi city of Dujail in 1982. The court said the former president should be hanged within 30 days.

There have been disagreements among Iraqi officials in recent days as to whether Iraqi law dictates the execution must take place within 30 days and whether President Jalal Talabani and his two deputies have to approve it.

In his Friday sermon, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

"Oh, God, you know what Saddam has done! He killed millions of Iraqis in prisons, in wars with neighboring countries and he is responsible for mass graves. Oh God, we ask you to take revenge on Saddam," said Sheik Sadralddin al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as SCIRI, the dominant party in al-Maliki's coalition.

With at least 72 more Iraqis killed Thursday in violence, U.S. officials and Iraqis expressed concern about the potential for even worse bloodshed following Saddam's execution.

In the latest violence, a suicide bomber killed nine people near a Shiite mosque north of Baghdad on Friday, police said. A round of mortar shells also slammed into al-Maidan square in central Baghdad, wounding ten people and damaging shops and buildings in the area, police said.

Gunmen killed two employees of an oil company and another civilian in Mosul, 250 miles northwest of Baghdad. Two civilians and a policeman were fatally shot in separate attacks in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of the capital, police said.

U.S. troops, meanwhile, killed six people and destroyed a weapons cache in separate raids in Baghdad and northwest of the Iraqi capital, the U.S. military said.

One of the raids targeted two buildings in the village of Thar Thar, where U.S. troops found 16 pounds of homemade explosives, two large bombs, a rocket-propelled grenade, suicide vests and multiple batteries, the military said.

Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops also captured 13 suspects and confiscated weapons in a raid on a mosque southeast of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Friday.

Court Clears Path to Saddam's Execution

Associated Press December 26, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's highest appeals court on Tuesday upheld Saddam Hussein's death sentence and said he must be hanged within 30 days for the killing of 148 Shiites in the central city of Dujail.


The sentence "must be implemented within 30 days," chief judge Aref Shahin said. "From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation."

On Nov. 5, an Iraqi court sentenced Saddam to the gallows for ordering the 1982 killings following an attempt on his life.

Under Iraqi law, the appeals court decision must be ratified by President Jalal Talabani and Iraq's two vice presidents. Talabani opposes the death penalty but has in the past deputized a vice president to sign an execution order on his behalf - a substitute that was legally accepted.

Raed Juhi, a spokesman for the High Tribunal court that convicted Saddam, said the judicial system would ensure that Saddam is executed even if Talabani and the two vice presidents do not ratify the decision.

"We'll implement the verdict by the power of the law," Juhi said. He did not elaborate.

The appeals court also upheld death sentences for Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujail residents.

The appeals court concluded the sentence of life imprisonment given to former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan was too lenient and returned his file to the High Tribunal. Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder in the Dujail case.

"We demand that he be sentenced to death," said Shahin, the appeals judge.

At his trial, Saddam argued that the Dujail residents who were killed had been convicted in a legitimate Iraqi court for trying to assassinate him in 1982.

The televised trial was watched throughout Iraq and the Middle East as much for theater as for substance. Saddam was ejected from the courtroom repeatedly for political harangues, and his half brother once showed up in long underwear and sat with his back to the judges.

The nine-month trial inflamed Iraq's political divide, however, and three defense lawyers and a witness were murdered during the course of its 39 sessions.

Saddam is in the midst of a second trial charging him with genocide and other crimes during a 1987-88 military crackdown on Kurds in northern Iraq. An estimated 180,000 Kurds died during the operation.

Saddam was found hiding with an unfired pistol in a hole in the ground near his home village north of Baghdad in December 2003, eight months after he fled the capital ahead of advancing American troops.

A Redneck Christmas Poem

Twas the Night before Christmas, and all through the shack
Not a creature was stirrin', cept the lice on muh back.
The Skoal cans wuz nailed to the screen door with care,
With hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were sleepin', all snug in their beds,
While visions of� tractor pulls danced in their heads.
And Ma in her nightgown all stained with pound cake.
Had just settled down to watch Ricki Lake.

When out in the driveway, a loud noise I heard,
I opened the winder to check muh T-bird.
I ran to the door, like I's on a mission,
But I tripped on some parts from muh granny's transmission.

The moon shone outside, the hound dog wuz barkin'.
Muh daughter weren't� home yet, she wuz still out parkin'.

When what to muh whiskey blind eyes should I see
But a Chevy S-10, pulled by eight flyin' sheep.
With a fat nasty driver, so disgustin' and sick
I said, "Shoot Fire! That must be St. Nick!

More rapid than X-lax his wooly sheep came
And he belched and he hollered, and he called 'em by name.

Now CLIFFORD! Now VERNON! Now LESTER and ENUS!
On FESTUS!� On ELMER!� On ROSCOE and CLETUS!

From the top of the shack to them there garbage bins
Now Dash Away! Dash Away! Dash Away youins!

I heard a loud sound on the roof of muh shack.
Pud down muh beer and went fer muh gun rack.
He fell through the roof, plum killed my dog,
I swear that ole' Santa looked just like Boss Hog.

He wore a T-shirt, rebel flag on the front,
And his jeans were all bloody from that morning's hunt.
A big nekkid lady tattooed on his arm,
And he wore black boots that he'd picked up in 'Nam.

His eyes, how they glazed from too much Wild Turkey.
From the side of his mouth hung a stick of beef jerky.
A scar on his cheek from a fight with the cops.
The veins on his face looked ready to pop.

The butt of a Marlboro clung to his lip
He wore a hip pack full of B-B-Q chips.
He had a fat face and a hairy beer belly.
I ain't seen one that big since muh ex-wife Shelly.

He was gap-toothed and dumb with an I.Q. of three
And I laughed cause that redneck was smarter than me.
A wink of his eye, a fierce shake of his head,
From his hair came a rat that ran under the bed.

He reached in his sack, sipped his gin and tonic,
Then filled the kid's stockings with Hooked on Phonics.
His toys came from Big Lots and they weren't very nice
But he had lots of them and yuh can't beat the price.

He gave us a tape of them hound dogs that sing Jingle Bells.
Some Crisco, some Spam, some Oatmeal Cream pies,
And a Nascar T-shirt in Double X size.

When the presents were gone and he had no more,
He staggered and stumbled right through muh screen door.

He hopped in his truck, to his sheep gave an order
"Hurry up youins! To the Tennessee border!"
And I heard him cry out, with a strong southern drawl,
"MERRY CHRISTMAS, YOU REDNECKS! MERRY CHRISTMAS Y'ALL... YEE HAWWWW!