Baghdad, Iraq – Ecstasy swept Iraq’s Shiite and Kurdish regions Sunday, but in the Sunni heartland, policemen wept in the streets and ordinary townspeople vowed revenge after Sad dam Hussein was sentenced to hang.
Lines of cars hung with plastic flowers snaked through the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where leaders of the country’s long-oppressed Shiite majority heralded Hussein’s punishment for the 1982 killings of nearly 150 of their fellow Shiites after an assassination attempt on the former Iraqi leader, who is Sunni.
Shiites nationwide declared the verdict sweet revenge for Hussein’s 23 years of brutal rule.
“Saddam is paying the price for murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis,” said Abu Sinan as he and his neighbors defied a curfew to rally in the streets of Sadr City, Baghdad’s impoverished Shiite slum. “This is an unprecedented feeling of happiness. … Nothing matches it – no festival or marriage or birth.”
There had been hope that Hussein’s trial would bring healing to a sundered country, with justice for Shiites as one of its chief aims. But Sunday’s sentence stirred outrage in Sunni neighborhoods where support for the former regime was strongest.
There were fears the country could explode again in sectarian killings and push Iraq toward all-out civil war once the open-ended curfew was lifted.
Gunfire rang out across Iraq on Sunday, both in celebration and in violence.
A police patrol rolled down the main street in Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, 80 miles north of the capital. It led thousands of demonstrators waving photos of Hussein and shooting AK-47 rifles into the air.
“All the Arab tribes will take revenge, and the Americans did not account for this,” said a retired teacher, Mohammed Abbas.
In the northern town of Kirkuk, Kurdish taxi driver Khatab Ahmed kept his six children home from school, and the family gathered around the television to watch the sentencing.
Ahmed’s brother and uncle disappeared after their arrests by Hussein’s security forces in the 1980s.
“I want them to see with their own eyes what happens to a ruler who oppresses his people. I think this is the best lesson to my children about respecting other human beings,” he said.
