Baghdad, Iraq – In a small concrete room in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Saddam Hussein was defiant even in his last moments, shouting slogans from his Baath Party as his prosecutor read his death warrant.
His last words were equally defiant.
“Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians.”
The doctor who attended his execution advised Hussein to ask forgiveness, but Mayriam Rayis, legal adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said he refused.
Hussein had reportedly asked that, as Iraq’s commander in chief, he be sent before a firing squad. Instead, he was condemned to die on the gallows – like a garden-variety Iraqi criminal or thug.
When the time came, before dawn in Baghdad, Hussein did not wear his familiar military uniform and beret but a black coat over a white shirt, black trousers and black shoes.
His jet-black hair was carefully combed, his salt-and-pepper beard neatly clipped. He carried a Koran.
Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that Hussein, 69, was not sedated.
“Not at all, Saddam was normal and in full control,” Haddad said. “He was aware of his fate and he knew he was about to face death. He said, ‘This is my end, this is the end of my life, but I started my life as a fighter and as a political militant, so death does not frighten me.”‘
After his execution and a brief viewing of his body by select witnesses, the room was closed until late Saturday, when the body was loaded on a helicopter and flown to Tikrit, Hussein’s hometown, for an overnight burial, Rayis said.
Hussein’s eldest daughter, who lives in exile in Jordan and is wanted in Iraq, had said she wanted to bury her father in Yemen, where she could visit his gravesite, defense lawyer Bushra Khalil said, and the Yemeni president had agreed to accept the body.
But Hussein’s al-Majid tribe asked to bury the body in Awja, the village where Saddam buried his sons Odai and Qusai Hussein after they died in a gun battle with U.S. forces in 2003.
An al-Maliki adviser had earlier said the government wanted the gravesite kept secret to prevent it from becoming an insurgent shrine, but Rayis said the administration is not worried about pilgrims flocking to Tikrit.
“His tribe asked for this, and we decided it was the humanitarian thing to do,” she said.
Rayis said Hussein’s body was released with the understanding that tribal leaders will not hold a large public funeral.
Iraqi security forces traveled with the body at the family’s request, Rayis said, to ensure that it was not desecrated.
“He was treated with the utmost respect,” Rayis said of the body, “which he never provided for anyone else.”
