Baghdad, Iraq – Defiant, raging and arrogant to the end, Saddam Hussein trembled and shouted “God is great” Sunday as he was sentenced to hang.
“Long live the people, and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!” Hussein cried out.
Then bailiffs took the arms of Iraq’s once all-powerful leader, and the man whom the United States went to war to drive from power walked steadily from the courtroom with a smirk.
Chief Judge Raouf Abdul-Rahman sentenced Hussein to the gallows Sunday for crimes against humanity, convicting the former dictator and six subordinates for a nearly quarter- century-old case of violent suppression.
Shiites and Kurds, who had been tormented and killed in the tens of thousands under Hussein’s iron rule, erupted in celebration – but looked ahead fearfully for a potential backlash from the Sunni insurgency that some believe could be a final shove into all-out civil war.
A round-the-clock curfew imposed before the verdict helped avert widespread bloodshed, but police said 72 people were killed or found dead nationwide by daybreak, and worries grew about what will happen when the curfew is lifted.
Hussein and the six subordinates were convicted and sentenced for the 1982 killings of 148 people in a Shiite town after an attempt on his life there.
The nine-month trial inflamed the nation. Three defense lawyers and a witness were slain in the course of its 39 sessions.
Televised, the trial was watched throughout Iraq and the Middle East as much for theater as for substance. Hussein was ejected from court repeatedly for his political harangues, and his half- brother and co-defendant, Barzan Ibrahim, once showed up in long underwear and sat with his back to the judges.
With justice for Hussein’s crimes done, the U.S.-backed Shiite prime minister called for reconciliation and delivered the most eloquent speech of his five months in office.
“The verdict placed on the heads of the former regime does not represent a verdict for any one person. It is a verdict on a whole dark era that was unmatched in Iraq’s history,” Nouri al-Maliki said.
The White House praised the Iraqi judicial system and denied that the U.S. had been “scheming” to have the historic verdict announced two days before American midterm elections, widely seen as a referendum on the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq.
Lost in the drama of Sunday’s death sentence was any mention of the failed search for the alleged weapons of mass destruction that President Bush said led the U.S. to invade Iraq in March 2003.
Hussein 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.
Twenty-two months later, he went on trial for ordering the torture and killing of nearly 150 Shiites from the city of Dujayl.
Hussein said those who were killed had been found guilty in a legitimate Iraqi court for trying to assassinate him in 1982.
Ibrahim, Hussein’s half-brother and intelligence chief during the Dujayl killings, was sentenced to join the former leader on the gallows, as was Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujayl residents.
Iraq’s former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Three other defendants were given up to 15 years in prison for torture and premeditated murder, while a local Baath Party official was acquitted for lack of evidence.
In the streets of Dujayl, a Tigris River city of 84,000, people celebrated and burned pictures of their former tormentor. In Baghdad, the Shiite bastion of Sadr City exploded in jubilation.
But in Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, not far from Dujayl, 1,000 people defied the curfew and carried pictures of the city’s favorite son through the streets. Some declared the court a product of the U.S. “occupation forces” and condemned the verdict.
A trial envisioned to heal Iraq’s deep ethnic and sectarian wounds appeared rather to have deepened the fissures.
“This government will be responsible for the consequences, with the deaths of hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands whose blood will be shed,” Salih al-Mutlaq, a Sunni political leader, told al-Arabiya satellite TV.
The verdicts
Sentences for Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants on trial for 1982 war crimes in the town of Dujayl:
Saddam Hussein: Former Iraqi president, death by hanging
Barzan Ibrahim: Hussein’s half-brother and former intelligence chief, death by hanging
Awad Hamed al-Bandar: Former head of the Revolutionary Court, death by hanging
Taha Yassin Ramadan: Former Iraqi vice president, life in prison
Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid: Former Baath Party official, 15 years in prison
Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid: Former Baath Party official, 15 years in prison
Ali Dayih Ali: Former Baath Party official, 15 years in prison
Mohammed Azawi Ali: Former Baath Party official, acquitted of all charges
What’s next for Hussein
Appeals: A nine-judge panel will review the evidence to determine if the convictions and sentences of Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants are just. There is no time limit, but a court official says deliberations are likely to take three to four weeks.
Ratification: If upheld, sentences must be ratified by President Jalal Talabani and two vice presidents, one a Sunni Arab. Talabani opposes the death penalty but has previously deputized a vice president to sign an execution order on his behalf – a substitute that has been legally accepted.
Final step: Hussein and two others sentenced to die are to be hanged within 30 days after the appeal.
