Saddam Hussein Executed

[donsaeid]

Saddam Hussein was executed Friday night for ordering the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims in 1982.

Crimes Leveled Against Saddam

·Sept. 22, 1980: Iraqi forces invade Iran, launching an eight-year war that costs hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. Saddam has been accused of using chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve agents, against Iran.

·Aug. 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait after accusing it of stealing Iraq's oil through wells pumped under the two countries' border. Beaten back by invading U.S. forces, retreating Iraqi troops set fire to hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells and release millions of gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf.

·1991: Saddam is accused of brutally suppressing uprisings by Kurds and Shiite Muslims, soon after U.S.-led forces drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

·Saddam's government has been accused of carrying out a campaign of forced deportations of Kurdish and Turkomen families to southern Iraq, displacing hundreds of thousands throughout the country.

[mike435]

http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/world/2006/12/29/raman****aq.hussein.executed.affl

warnning video leading up to excecution

[donsaeid]

Picture of saddam before execution!

[donsaeid]

Picture of saddam before execution!

[donsaeid]

Video Of Saddams Execution!
with interview with on of the executers!

[Rasputin]

Saddam Hussein was executed at dawn today following his conviction by an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity.
The death sentence was carried out at a former military intelligence headquarters in a Shia district of Baghdad at 6am local time (3am GMT).

One of those who witnessed the hanging, Sami al-Askari, an advisor to the Iraqi prime minister, said Saddam struggled when he was taken from his cell in a US military prison but was composed in his last moments. He expressed no remorse.

The former dictator, dressed in black, refused a hood and said he wanted the Koran he carried to the gallows to be given to a friend. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab'," Mr Askari told the Associated Press.

In a prepared statement, George Bush cautioned that Saddam's execution would not stop the violence in Iraq but said it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

The office of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, released a statement that said Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people. The Iraqi state broadcaster, Iraqiya, vowed to air film of the execution.

The hanging was followed by reports of a car bombing with many casualties in the Shia Muslim city of Kufa.

In Sadr City, a major Shia Muslim area in Baghdad, people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted.

The execution, which became imminent after his appeal was this week rejected, brought to an end the life of one of the Middle East's most brutal dictators.

Launching the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, campaigns against the Kurds and putting down the southern Shia revolt that followed the 1991 Gulf war - triggered by his invasion of Kuwait - put the casualties attributable to his rule into the hundreds of thousands.

But the conviction that led to his hanging was for a relatively lower figure - the deaths of 148 men and boys from the Shia Muslim town of Dujail, where members of an opposition group had made a botched attempt to assassinate him in 1982.

In Iraq opinion was divided sharply along sectarian lines, with Sunni Arabs warning of "bloodbaths in the streets".

Even among Shia Muslims, terrorised for decades by Saddam, there was a sense of hopelessness. "They can kill him 10 times but it won't bring safety to the streets because there is no state of law," said one Shia taxi driver who gave his name as Shawkat.

In the Kurdish north, jubilation was tempered by the fear of deeper sectarian tensions and disappointment that Saddam would now not be able to stand trial for other charges including the gas attack on the town of Halabja that killed 5,000 people in 1988.

"It would have been much better for the execution to have taken place in Halabja, not in Baghdad," said Barham Khorsheed, a Kurd.

Many critics dismissed the conduct of the trial and Saddam Hussein's defence team had accused the Iraqi government of interfering in the proceedings. The latter complaint was backed by the US-based Human Rights Watch.

The process that ended with his execution began with the launch of the 2003 US-led war to disarm Iraq's claimed weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Bush committed the US to a policy of regime change and Saddam was ousted within weeks of the invasion. Just over eight months later, US forces captured him from his hiding place in a hole near his hometown of Tikrit.

Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator in Iraq, told a press conference "We got him". For the first time, he showed video footage of a dishevelled former dictator, with unkempt hair and beard, being inspected by military doctors.

His rise was through the Ba'ath party. The Ba'ath, who had participated in previous coups against Iraqi governments, took complete power in 1968.

Saddam was deputy president and regime strongman, responsible for internal security. But used his position to build a powerbase allowing him to supplant Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as president in 1979. On taking power he launched a massive purge of the party.

Iraq under Saddam was under the thuggish rule of the dictator and, frequently, his relatives and cronies from Tikrit.

Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar were also sentenced to death at the close of the Dujail trial.

Iraqiya television initially reported the two were also hanged today but officials later said only Saddam was executed.

[Rasputin]

صدام حسين، رهبر سابق عراق که تا زمان سرنگونی توسط نيروهای تحت رهبری آمريکا حدود يک ربع قرن بر عراق حکومت کرد، به جرم ارتکاب جنايات عليه بشريت، به دار آويخته شده است.
تلويزيون رسمی عراق صحنه هايی را نشان داده که در آن، صدام حسين به محل چوبه دار برده می شد. وی در حالی نشان داده می شود که يک پالتوی سياه رنگ بر تن دارد و هنگامی که حلقه طناب به دور گردنش قرار داده می شود آرام به نظر می رسد.

چند مرد که بر صورتشان نقاب داشتند او را تا پای چوبه دار همراهی می کردند.

تلويزيون عراق همچنين تصاويری از نوری المالکی، نخست وزير اين کشور را نشان داد که در حال امضای حکم مرگ صدام است.

تلويزيون رسمی عراق در موقع اعلام خبر اعدام صدام، ضمن توصيف رييس جمهوری 69 ساله عراق به عنوان يک جانی، اعلام کرد که اعدام او بيانگر پايان يک دوره تاريک در تاريخ عراق است.

پيشتر، موفق الربيعی، مشاور امنيت ملی دولت عراق که شاهد به دار آويخته شدن رهبر سابق اين کشور بوده، گفت صدام حسين پيش از بامداد به دار آويخته شده و اعدام او فيلمبرداری شده است.

وی گفت صدام حسين با دستبند به محل دار آورده شد، نسخه ای از قرآن با خود داشت و آشفته بود.

آقای الربيعی افزود صدام مقاومت نکرد اما حاضر نشد کيسه سياه را بر روی سرش قرار دهد.

اعدام صدام در يک ساختمان قديمی متعلق به وزارت دفاع عراق که هم اکنون تحت کنترل آمريکايی هاست، صورت گرفت.

در پی به دار آويخته شدن صدام، نيروهای آمريکايی در بغداد به حال آماده باش کامل درآمده اند.

گزارش می رسد که در برخی از نقاط شيعه نشين شهر، مردم به نشانه شادمانی اقدام به شليک گلوله هوايی کرده اند اما شهر به طور کلی آرام گزارش شده است.

رسانه های عراقی ابتدا اعلام کرده بودند که دو تن از ديگر شخصيت های بلندپايه حکومت صدام نيز همراه او اعدام شده اند اما موفق الربيعی گفته است که تنها صدام اعدام شده است.

برزان التکريتی، برادر ناتنی صدام حسين و عواد البندر، از قضات سابق عراقی قرار است هفته آينده و پس از تعطيلات عيد قربان اعدام شوند.

صدام و اين دو نفر در اتهام صدور دستور قتل حدود يک صد و پنجاه شيعه عراقی در سال 1982در روستای دجيل، مقصر شناخته شدند.

تلويزيون عراق پس از اعلام خبر به دار آويخته شدن صدام به پخش سرودهای ملی پرداخت و سپس گوينده اعلام کرد: "صدام جنايتکار با چوبه دار اعدام شد."

رهبر سابق عراق در دادگاهی ويژه که بيش از يک سال ادامه داشت، به جرم "جنايت عليه بشريت" به اعدام با چوبه دار محکوم شد.

به گزارش رويتر دختر صدام حسين تقاضا کرده است که جسد پدرش در يمن دفن شود.

"اعدام بی درنگ"

گفته می شود که مقامات آمريکايی مايل بودند که رهبر سابق عراق پس از سال نو مسيحی اعدام شود.

اما نوری مالکی نخست وزير عراق اصرار ورزيد که اجرای حکم اعدام صدام حسين نبايد تأخير شود.

آقای مالکی در گفتگو با مقامات آمريکايی در عراق، موافقت آنها را با اعدام صدام پيش از تعطيلات سال نو مسيحی جلب کرد.

گروه وکلای مدافع صدام حسين از قاضی دادگاهی در ايالات متحده درخواست کرده بودند که با تحويل رهبر سابق عراق از دست مأموران آمريکايی به مأموران عراقی مخالفت کند.

به نظر وکلای مدافع صدام حسين، دادگاه او با موازين حقوقی درستی انجام نگرفته است.

آنها قصد داشتند از اعدام رهبر سابق عراق جلوگيری کنند، اما قاضی آمريکايی تقاضای وکلای صدام حسين را نپذيرفت.

زمان و مکان به دار آويخته شدن صدام اعلام عمومی نشد، زيرا بيم می رفت که اعدام او به آشوب و نا امنی در کشور دامن بزند.

محاکمه صدام در ۱۹ اکتبر ۲۰۰۵ شروع شد و حدود يک سال بعد با حکم اعدام او پايان يافت. اين حکم در پنجم نوامبر اعلام شد و در ۲۶ دسامبر پس از ابرام نهايی به حالت قابل اجرا در آمد.

[Rasputin]

تنها چند ساعت پس از به دار آويخته شدن صدام حسين، رهبر سابق عراق، بمبی در يکی از بازارهای شهر کوفه در جنوب عراق منفجر شده که تعداد زيادی کشته بر جای گذاشته است.
منابع بيمارستانی گفته اند که دست کم هفده نفر در اثر اين انفجار کشته شده اند اما منابع امنيتی تعداد کشته شدگان را تا 30 نفر برآورد کرده اند.

تا 45 نفر نيز در اثر اين انفجار مجروح شده اند.

پليس گفت اين بازار در آستانه تعطيلات عيد قربان، مملو از خريداران بود.

شهر کوفه که از مراکز زيارتی شيعيان است، در 170 کيلومتری جنوب بغداد واقع شده است.

گفته می شود اين بمب در يک مينی بوس منفجر شده است.

[Rasputin]

اعدام صدام حسين رئيس جمهور سابق عراق را شايد بتوان طليعه پايان عصر ديکتاتوری هايی در خاورميانه دانست که برای بقای خود جنايت عليه بشريت را مجاز می شمرند، اما هنوز نمی توان نظمی را که در منطقه خاورميانه و بويژه در عراق پس از مرگ صدام حسين در حال ظهور است، به دقت تبيين کرد.
ظاهرا دولت عراق از آن رو بر اعدام صدام اصرار کرد که اميد هواداران سرسخت حزب منحل شده بعث را برای بازگشت دوباره به قدرت به ياس تبديل کند و ساير عراقی ها را نيز به دگرگون شدن قطعی اوضاع عراق مطمئن سازد.

انگيزه دولت آمريکا هم از حمايت از اعدام صدام ، مشابه انگيزه های دولت عراق در اين مورد است با اين تفاوت که احتمالا ايالات متحده آمريکا علاقمند است تا اجرای حکم مرگ صدام ، زنگ خطر را برای آن دسته از رهبران خاورميانه که با آمريکا به مقابله برخاسته اند، به صدا درآورد.

بدين ترتيب، دولت های عراق و آمريکا هر کدام به درجاتی به پيامدهای داخلی و منطقه ای اعدام صدام چشم دوخته اند، تا از آن برای استقرار ثبات در عراق و آغاز نظمی تازه در خاورميانه بهره گيرند.

اعدام صدام اما ممکن است در کوتاه مدت نتيجه ای عکس آنچه دولت عراق می خواهد به بار آورد و باعث افزايش سطح خشونت در اين کشور شود.

قاعدتا بازماندگان نظام بعثی عراق که گفته می شود مسئول بخش مهمی از خشونت های جاری در عراق هستند، در انتقام از اعدام صدام حسين به حملات مرگبار خود عليه مراکز دولتی و اهداف غيرنظامی عراق شدت می بخشند، اما احتمال اينکه مرگ صدام حسين سبب تضعيف آنها در ميان مدت شود، منتفی نيست.


اعدام صدام پايان قطعی ديکتاتوری به شيوه او در عراق است، اما اينکه آيا شروعی برای صلح و دمکراسی پايدار در عراق است يا آغاز هرج و مرجی خشونت بار و تمام عيار، چندان قطعی نيست

در نبود صدام حسين، نيروهای وفادار به وی، بدون شک وجه نمادين کارزار مسلحانه خود را عليه دولت عراق از دست می دهند و همين مساله ممکن است آنها را به بی نتيجه بودن رفتار خشونت آميزشان متقاعد سازد و موجب تجديد نظر آنان در رفتارشان شود.

دولت های عراق و آمريکا، هر دو، از تجديد نظر هواداران حزب بعث در رفتارشان استقبال کنند، اما در حالی که برخی گرايش های شيعه در دولت عراق خواهان دور نگه داشتن بعثی ها از مراکز قدرت در اين کشور هستند، به نظر می رسد دولت آمريکا علاقمند است تا بعثی ها را وارد روند سياسی عراق کند.

علاقه آمريکا به بازگشت کنترل شده بعثی ها به مراکز قدرت در عراق، در واقع نمايانگر تمايل ايالات متحده به واگذاری سهم بيشتری از قدرت در عراق به جمعيت سنی مذهب اين کشور است، جمعيتی که از نحوه توزيع قدرت در عراق ناراضی است و از راه های مختلف می کوشد تا توازن قوا را در عراق به نفع خود به هم بزند.

در حقيقت، حمايت جدی دولت های عرب متحد آمريکا در خاورميانه از مطالبات سياسی سنی های عراق از يک سو و بی اعتمادی روز افزون آمريکا به شيعيان به علت روابط بخشی از آنها با دولت ايران از سوی ديگر، علت گرايش آمريکا به ارائه امتيازات بيشتر به جمعيت سنی عراق شده است.

بر اين اساس، آمريکا که حمايت خود را از اجرای حکم اعدام صدام امتيازی برای شيعيان عراق می داند، ممکن است در اقدامی موازی، گروه های شيعه را برای نشان دادن انعطاف بيشتر در مورد تقسيم قدرت با سنی ها، تحت فشار بگذارد.

به عبارت ديگر، آمريکا به اعدام صدام نگاهی پاردوکسيکال (متناقض نما) دارد، بدين نحو که مرگ او را نماد پايان قطعی دوره تسلط اقليت سنی عراق بر اکثريت شيعه همراه با آغاز دوره ای از مشارکت گسترده سنی ها در دولت جديد شيعه تلقی می کند.

اين در حالی است که به نظر می رسد گروه های شيعه برای مشارکت بيشتر سنی ها بويژه بعثی ها در امور حکومتی عراق هم رای نيستند.

در حالی که حزب الدعوه ومجلس اعلای انقلاب اسلامی عراق برای جذب بيشتر جمعيت سنی در روند سياسی کشورشان روش منعطفی در پيش گرفته اند، نيروهای وفادار به مقتدی صدر همچنان با هر گونه ورود هواداران حزب بعث به مراکز قدرت مخالفت می ورزند.

به نظر می رسد اگر جذب نيروهای بعثی به روند سياسی عراق عملی شود، نيروهای مقتدی صدر فاصله خود را از دولت عراق بيشتر کنند، اين مساله اما همان چيزی است که آمريکا و جمعيت سنی عراق از آن استقبال می کنند، زيرا به باور آنها گروه مقتدی صدر در خشونت های فرقه ای در عراق نقش بسزايی دارد.

به هر حال، تاثير اعدام صدام حسين بر تحولات داخلی عراق، به ميزان موفقيت آمريکا در دخالت دادن جمعيت سنی در مراکز قدرت و نحوه برخورد شيعيان با اين موضوع بستگی دارد.

اگر سنی ها همچنان سهمی بسيار فراتر از اندازه جمعيتشان از قدرت بخواهند و در مقابل شيعيان نيز بر کثرت عددی به عنوان تنها مبنای تقسيم قدرت در عراق تاکيد ورزند، به احتمال زياد، اعدام صدام حسين جز بر نابسامانی عراق نخواهد افزود، اما اگر دو طرف مناقشه تا حد جلب رضايت طرف مقابل از خود انعطاف نشان دهند، آنگاه اعدام صدام می تواند به رغم واکنش های خشونت آميز ابتدايی طرفداران آن، به تدريج عراق را به سمت صلح و ثبات هدايت کند.

تاثيرات منطقه ای اعدام صدام حسين نيز تابعی از تاثير داخلی مرگ اوست. اگر اعدام صدام مشارکت بيشتر جمعيت سنی در روند سياسی عراق را موجب شود، مرگ او خشم دولت های عرب منطقه را در پی نخواهد داشت، هر چندکه توده های عرب در عزای او مراسم سوگواری برگزار کنند.

اما اگر اعدام صدام، تغييری محسوس در تقسيم قدرت در عراق پديد نياورد، دولت های عرب منطقه ضمن ناخشنودی از اعدام وی، برای دخالت بيشتر در امور عراق تحريک خواهند شد.

اعدام صدام پايان قطعی ديکتاتوری به شيوه او در عراق است، اما اينکه آيا شروعی برای صلح و دمکراسی پايدار در عراق است يا آغاز هرج و مرجی خشونت بار و تمام عيار، چندان قطعی نيست.

[Rasputin]

زندگی توفانی و پرفراز و نشيب صدام حسين سرانجام با تکه ای طناب درهم پيچيده شد.
در زمان حکمرانی او صدها هزار نفر از شهروندان عراقی جان خود را از دست دادند و ميليون ها نفر رنج و فشاری توصيف ناپذير را متحمل شدند.

اينک نظامی که صدام با بيش از سی سال استبداد برپا کرد، با مرگ او برای هميشه مدفون شده است.

ترديدی نيست که زيرکی و پشتکار شخصی نيز در سير سرگذشت اين مرد عراقی از اعماق ذلت تا اوج قدرت نقش داشته است.

صدام حسين در سال ۱۹۳۷ در روستايی پرت و گمنام به نام عوجه به دنيا آمد و با فقر و محنت بزرگ شد.

در محيطی خشن و آکنده از تعصبات قبيله ای بار آمد، که عطوفت و مهربانی در آن جايی نداشت. در خانواده و جامعه و مدرسه جز شرارت و کينه توزی درسی نياموخت.

در آستانه بيست سالگی به حزب ناسيوناليستی بعث (شاخه عراق) گرايش يافت و سرنوشت خود را با آن پيوند زد.

پس از انقلاب ضدسلطنتی ۱۴ ژوئيه ۱۹۵۸ عراق می رفت تا با گام های لرزان دموکراسی و نظام چندحزبی را تجربه کند.

صدام که زور و خشونت را تنها راه پيشرفت شناخته بود، به دار و دسته ای پيوست که در سال ۱۹۵۹ به جان عبدالکريم قاسم نخست وزير ميانه روی کشور سوء قصد کرد.

او پس از ناکامی در توطئه قتل نخست وزير از راه سوريه به مصر گريخت.

حزب بعث عراق سرانجام موفق شد در فوريه سال ۱۹۶۳ با پشتيبانی از توطئه چند افسر ارتش، با کودتايی خونين به دولت قاسم پايان دهد.

صدام حسين بی درنگ به بغداد برگشت و شريان اصلی حزب بعث، يعنی شبکه امنيتی مخفی آن را به دست گرفت.

حزب بعث به خاطر شرکت در رشته ای از اعمال تبهکارانه، در پايان سال ۱۹۶۳ از حکومت عراق کنار گذاشته شد، اما در خفا به تدارک کودتا پرداخت تا سرانجام در سال ۱۹۶۸ قدرت را به دست گرفت.

حزب صدام در قدرت

بازگشت حزب بعث به قدرت، برای صدام حسين رويدادی فرخنده بود: احمد حسن بکر رهبر کودتای نظامی از بستگان نزديک او بود و صدام با تنها ۳۱ سال سن نزديکترين ياور او شد.

صدام عملا همه کاره کشور شد و تمام همت خود را مقصور بر آن ساخت که در عراق رژيمی خودکامه، آهنين و تام گرا برقرار کند.

او با قهر و خشونت مخالفان و رقيبان را از ميدان بيرون راند و تمام پست های حساس دولتی، به ويژه مناصب اطلاعاتی و امنيتی را به بستگان و نزديکان خود سپرد و هدايت ماشين سرکوب را شخصا به دست گرفت.

او ظرف چند سال موفق شد در عراق، که به سرزمين کودتاها شهره بود، آرامش گورستانی برقرار کند.

صدام در سال ۱۹۷۹ سرانجام احمد حسن بکر رئيس جمهور کشور را کنار زد و زمام امور را شخصا به دست گرفت.

لشکرکشی های خارجی

پس از سقوط نظام پادشاهی در ايران، صدام حسين اميدوار بود بتواند با استفاده از فضای آشفته و ضعف ارتش پس از انقلاب، بخش جنوبی ايران (خوزستان) را تصرف کند.

يورش نظامی صدام به ايران ناکام ماند، جز آنکه پس از جنگی هشت ساله برای دو کشور همسايه صدها هزار کشته و دو اقتصاد ويران به جا گذاشت.

صدام که با تکيه بر نيروی نظامی، خود را "رهبر امت عرب" می ديد، برای گرفتن امتيازات سياسی و اقتصادی به همسايگان عرب خود فشار آورد.

او در اوت ۱۹۹۰ به همسايه کوچک خود کويت حمله کرد اما پس از تصرف آن کشور، با واکنش شديد خارجی روبرو شد. لشکرکشی او باز هم به شکست نظامی، و به دنبال آن ويرانی کشور و تيره روزی بيشتر مردم منجر شد.

به دنبال شکست در کويت در شهرهای شيعه نشين جنوب و منطقه کردنشين شمال کشور شورش هايی گسترده در گرفت.

صدام برای خفه کردن مخالفت ها به خشن ترين شيوه ها دست زد: بمباران مناطق نا آرام، کوچ دادن توده های وسيع مردم، کاربرد اسلحه شيميايی، و حتی نابودی منابع طبيعی، مانند خشک سازی با برنامه منطقه اهوار در جنوب عراق.

رويارويی با خارج

رژيم صدام حسين که در داخل عراق اختناقی سنگين برقرار کرده بود، در خارج و با همسايگان از سياستی مهاجم و ماجراجويانه پيروی می کرد.

ايالات متحده عراق را متهم کرد که با توليد سلاح های کشتار جمعی امنيت منطقه حساس خاورميانه را به خطر انداخته است.

صدام حسين با نشان دادن سرسختی و عناد در برابر گروه های بين المللی مخالف توليد سلاح های جمعی، به بدبينی و خشم کشورهای غربی به ويژه آمريکا دامن زد.

با حملات يازدهم سپتامبر ۲۰۰۱ ايالات متحده، رژيم عراق را در رأس دشمنان خود قرار داد و تصميم به سرنگونی آن گرفت.

فروپاشی رژيم صدام

صدام سالهای دراز ثروت عمومی کشور را برای تقويت حاکميت خود صرف کرده و اميدوار بود که نيروهای ويژه ای مانند "گارد جمهوری" و "فدائيان صدام" از او در برابر حملات خارجی دفاع کنند.

اما هنگامی که در مارس ۲۰۰۳ نيروهای ائتلاف به سرکردگی ارتش آمريکا از جنوب به خاک عراق سرازير شدند، رژيمی که "ضد ضربه" به نظر می آمد، به سرعت متلاشی شد.

صدام آخرين بار چند روز پيش از سقوط نهايی پايتخت عراق، در تلويزيون ظاهر شد و هموطنان خود را به پيکار و "مقاومت در برابر اشغالگران بيگانه" فرا خواند.

صدام تا ۱۵ دسامبر ۲۰۰۳ پنهان بود و شايعاتی رواج داشت مبنی بر اينکه او در مخفيگاه به سازماندهی مبارزه شورشيان با نيروهای خارجی سرگرم است. اما تحقيقات بعدی نشان داد که او در دوران اختفا تنها به نجات جان خود فکر می کرده است.

محاکمه صدام در ۱۹ اکتبر ۲۰۰۵ شروع شد و حدود يک سال بعد با حکم اعدام او پايان يافت. اين حکم در پنجم نوامبر اعلام شد و در ۲۶ دسامبر پس از ابرام نهايی به حالت قابل اجرا در آمد.

آغاز دورانی تازه؟

اما آيا با مرگ صدام داستان غم انگيز عراق به همين جا خاتمه يافته است؟

عراقی که صدام حسين به جا گذاشته است از جامعه ای سالم و به سامان فرسنگها فاصله دارد. در اين جامعه خشونت و زورگويی، بيرحمی و خونريزی در هر گوشه خودنمايی می کند.


بايد گوش تيز کرد و در دل اين آشوب بيکران درد زايمان ملتی را شنيد که در تلاشی رنجبار و عذاب آلود، يک بار ديگر متولد می شود.



بسياری عقيده دارند که صدام حسين برای کنترل عراق ماشين سرکوب و دستگاه های اطلاعاتی پيچيده ای به راه انداخته بود، اما شيوه حکومتی او در بنياد بسيار ساده بود و بر پايه سنت های کهن عشيره ای استوار بود.

تعصب، خشونت، توطئه گری و بيگانه ستيزی، از عناصر اصلی چنين فرهنگی هستند. صدام از دل همين فرهنگ بيرون آمد و با تمام نيرو به رسوخ آن تا عميق ترين نسوج جامعه همت گماشت.

برخی از ناظران با دولتمردان عراقی هم آواز هستند که آشوب و اضطراب کنونی تنها پوسته بيرونی روندهای شگرفی است که در بطن جامعه جريان دارد.

در عراق تحولات تاريخی مهمی شروع شده که نه تنها در اين کشور، بلکه در سراسر جهان عرب بی سابقه است.

برخی گفته اند که بايد گوش تيز کرد و در دل اين آشوب بيکران درد زايمان ملتی را شنيد که در تلاشی رنجبار و عذاب آلود، يک بار ديگر متولد می شود.

[Rasputin]

The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was executed this morning at the age of 69, may not yield many general biographies - he was personally too uninteresting for that - but he will be a case study for political scientists for years to come. For he was the model of a certain type of developing world despot, who was, for over three decades, as successful in his main ambition, which was taking and keeping total power, as he was destructive in exercising it.
Yet at the same time, he was commonplace and derivative. Stalin was his exemplar. The likeness came from more than conscious emulation: he already resembled him in origin, temperament and method. Like him, he was unique less in kind than in degree, in the extraordinary extent to which, if the more squalid forms of human villainy are the sine qua non of the successful tyrant, he embodied them. Like Stalin, too, he had little of the flair or colour of other 20th-century despots, little mental brilliance, less charisma, no redeeming passion or messianic fervour; he was only exceptional in the magnitude of his thuggery, the brutality, opportunism and cunning of the otherwise dull, grey apparatchik.

His rise to power was no more accidental than Stalin's. If he had not mastered Iraq as he did, someone very similar probably would have, and very probably also from Tikrit. Saddam's peculiar fortune was that, on his political majority, this small, drab town, on the Tigris upstream from Baghdad, was already poised to wrest a very special role in Iraqi history.

Saddam was born in the nearby village of Owja, into the mud house of his uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, and into what a Tikriti contemporary of his called a world "full of evil". His father, Hussein al-Majid, a landless peasant, had died before his birth, and his mother, Sabha, could not support the orphan, until she took a third husband.

Hassan Ibrahim took to extremes local Bedouin notions of a hardy upbringing. For punishment, he beat his stepson with an asphalt-covered stick. Thus, from earliest infancy, was Saddam nurtured - like a Stalin born into very similar circumstances - in the bleak conviction that the world is a congenitally hostile place, life a ceaseless struggle for survival, and survival only achieved through total self-reliance, chronic mistrust and the imperious necessity to destroy others before they destroy you.

The sufferings visited on the child begat the sufferings the grown man, warped, paranoid, omnipotent, visited on an entire people. Like Stalin, he hid his emotions behind an impenetrable facade of impassivity; but he assuredly had emotions of a virulent kind - an insatiable thirst for vengeance on the world he hated.

To fend off attack by other boys, Saddam carried an iron bar. It became the instrument of his wanton cruelty; he would bring it to a red heat, then stab a passing animal in the stomach, splitting it in half. Killing was considered a badge of courage among his male relatives. Saddam's first murder was of a shepherd from a nearby tribe. This, and three more in his teens, were proof of manhood.

The small-town thug possessed all the personal qualifications he might need to earn his place in the 20th-century's pantheon of tyrants. And the small town of Tikrit, lying in the heart of the Sunni Muslim "triangle" of central Iraq furnished the operational ones, too. Orthodox Sunni Arabs are only a small minority, 15% at most, of Iraq's population, outnumbered by the Shias of the south, 60% at least, and the Kurds of the mountainous north. Yet they always dominated Iraq's political life.

Thanks partly to the decline of traditional river traffic, Tikritis had taken to supplying the British-controlled Iraqi state with a disproportionate number of its soldiers. With time and plentiful purges, they emerged within the army as a distinct group; a preponderance which had been fortuitous at first finally became so great they could deliberately enlarge it. A close-knit minority within the Sunni minority, they exploited ties of region, clan and family to seize control of the army, then the state. Saddam, perfect recruit to the sinister, violent, conspiratorial underworld that was Iraqi politics, positioned himself at the heart of this process.

He himself was never a soldier, but he used a formidable array of Tikritis who were, and Ba'athists to boot. Ba'athism was a radical, pan-Arab nationalist doctrine then sweeping the region. Though doubtless impelled in that direction by the extreme, chauvinist beliefs of his uncle Khairallah, who had been dismissed from the army and imprisoned for five years for his part in a 1941 attack on an RAF base near Baghdad, it was mainly out of convenience, not conviction, that Saddam joined the party; strong in Tikrit and the Sunni "triangle", dedicated to force not persuasion, it readily appealed to a man of his ambition and temper.

In theory he remained a Ba'athist to his dying day, but for him Ba'athism was always an apparatus, never an ideology: no sooner was command of the one complete than he dispensed entirely with the other. For next to brutality, opportunism was his chief trait. Not Stalin himself could have governed with such whimsy, or lurched, ideologically, politically, strategically, from one extreme to another with quite such ease, regularity, and disastrous consequences, and yet still, incredibly, retain command to the end.

The Ba'ath, and other "revolutionary" parties, had come into their own with the overthrow, in 1958, of the "reactionary", British-created Hashemite monarchy. They quickly fell out with General Kassem's new regime and with each other, rivalries that expressed themselves mainly in streetfighting and assassinations. That was the way of life that Saddam fell into as a street-gang leader, after going, in 1955, to live with his uncle in Baghdad to study at Karkh high school.

Saddam first achieved national prominence in 1959 with a bungled attempt to kill Kassem. He seems to have lost his nerve and opened fire prematurely. But though his role was less than glorious, it became an essential component of the Saddam legend - that of the dauntless young revolutionary extracting a bullet from his leg with his own hand, and, with security forces in hot pursuit, swimming the icy waters of the Euphrates, knife between clenched teeth, before galloping to safety across the Syrian desert; eventually fetching up in Cairo, where his university law studies were terminated by the next political convulsion back home - Kassem's overthrow in February 1963.

Securing a share in the new regime, the Ba'athists lost it the following November when they fell out with the other parties. Pushed back into the underground, Saddam took what subsequently turned out to be his first, concrete step towards supreme office. In 1964, he formed the Jihaz al-Hunein, the Instrument of Yearning, the first, embryonic version of a terror apparatus of which, in its full fruition, Stalin would not have been ashamed.

It was an outgrowth of the party. That meant that, through it, Saddam, though not an officer, could now see his way to the summit. But at this stage his main asset was his collaboration with his fellow-Tikriti, Brigadier Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr. Thanks to a combination of Bakr's traditional military means and Saddam's new, "civilian" ones, the pair pulled off the "glorious July 1968 Revolution".

At 31, as deputy secretary general of the Ba'ath party, Saddam was the power behind President Bakr's throne. But at first he assumed, like Stalin in his similar period, a disarmingly modest and retiring demeanour as he lay the foundations of what he called a new kind of rule; "With our party methods," he said, "there is no chance for anyone who disagrees with us to jump on a couple of tanks and overthrow the government." Gradually he subordinated the army to the party.

There was nothing modest about the Ba'athists' inaugural reign of terror; few knew it then, but it was chiefly his handiwork, and quite different from anything hitherto experienced in a country already notorious for its harsh political tradition. Saddam's henchmen presided over "revolutionary tribunals" that sent hundreds to the firing squad on charges of puerile, trumped up absurdity. They called on "the masses" to "come and enjoy the feast": the hanging of "Jewish spies" in Liberation Square amid ghoulish festivities and bloodcurdling official harangues.

That was the public face. Behind it were such places as the Palace of the End. So called because King Faisal died there in the 1958 Revolution, it was now more aptly named than ever. Saddam's first security chief, Nadhim Kzar, had turned it into a chamber of horrors. But Kzar, a Shia, nursed a grudge against his Sunni patrons; in 1973, he turned against them; Saddam, Bakr and a host of top Tikritis had a very narrow escape indeed.

Thereafter the badly shaken number two relied almost entirely on Tikritis; the more sensitive the post, the more closely related its incumbent would be to himself. Meanwhile, with guile and infinite patience, he worked his way towards his supreme goal. Purge followed judicious purge, first aimed at the Ba'athists' rivals, then the army, then the party, then influential, respected, or strategically located people whom he deemed most liable, at some point, to cry halt to his inexorable ascension.

[Rasputin]

When, in June 1979, all was set for him to depose and succeed the ailing Bakr, he could have accomplished it with bloodless ease. But he wilfully, gratuitously chose blood in what was a psychological as well as a symbolic necessity. He had to inaugurate the "era of Saddam Hussein" with a rite whose message would be unmistakable: there had arisen in Mesopotamia a ruler who, in his barbaric splendour, cruelty and caprice, was to yield nothing to its despots of old.

Only now did he emerge, personally and very publicly, as accuser, judge and executioner in one. He called an extraordinary meeting of senior party cadres. They were solemnly informed that "a gang disloyal to the party and the revolution" had mounted a "base conspiracy" in the service of "Zionism and the forces of darkness", and that all the "traitors" were right there, with them, in the hall. One of their ringleaders, brought straight from prison, made a long and detailed confession of his "horrible crime".

Saddam, puffing on a Havana cigar, calmly watched the proceedings as if they had nothing to do with him. Then he took the podium. He began to read out the "traitors'" names, slowly and theatrically; he seemed quite overcome as he did so, pausing only to light his cigar or wipe away his tears with a handkerchief. All 66 "traitors" were led away one by one.

Thus did the new president make inaugural use of that essential weapon of the ultimate tyrant, the occasional flamboyant, contemptuous act of utter lawlessness, turpitude or unpredictability, and the enforced prostration of his whole apparatus, in praise and rejoicing, before it. Those of the audience who had not been named showed their relief with hysterical chants of gratitude and a baying for the blood of their fallen comrades.

Saddam then called on ministers and party leaders to join him in personally carrying out the "democratic executions"; every party branch in the country sent an armed delegate to assist them. It was, he said, "the first time in the history of revolutionary movements without exception, or perhaps of human struggle, that over half the supreme leadership had taken part in a tribunal" which condemned the other half. "We are now," he confided, "in our Stalinist era."

But in one way he had actually surpassed his exemplar. Upon entering the Kremlin, the former Georgian streetfighter had at least kept himself fittingly aloof from his "great terror". Not Saddam. Newly exalted, he was to remain down-to-earth too; new caliph of Baghdad, but, direct participant in his own terror, very much the Tikriti gangster, too.

The "Leader, President, Struggler" now emerged as a regional and international actor with the disproportionate capacity for promoting well-being and order or wreaking havoc which Iraq's great strategic and political importance, vast oil wealth, relatively educated citizenry and powerful army conferred on him. With U-turns, blunders and megalomaniac whimsies, he chose havoc; he wreaked it on the region and the world, but above all on Iraq itself.

In September 1980 he went to war against Iran. It was known as "Saddam's Qadisiyah", after the Arabs' early Islamic victory over the Persians. His official, strictly limited war aims revolved round the Shatt al-Arab estuary and his determination to renegotiate the "Algiers agreement" he had concluded a mere five years before. A dire emergency had forced that humiliation on him: the Iraqi army had been close to defeat in its campaign to suppress the last great, Iranian-backed Kurdish uprising led by Mullah Mustafa Barazani. The quid pro quo for Algiers had been the American-inspired withdrawal of the Shah's support for Barazani.

His "Qadisiyah", first of his spectacular volte-faces, was now to avenge the humiliation. But he also had a higher, unofficial aim: to weaken or destroy the Ayatollah Khomeini's new-born Islamic Republic, or at least its subversive potentialities in Iraq itself. For Iraq's Shia majority now saw in their Iranian co-religionists a means of bringing down Sunni minority rule. Hitherto closely bound to the Soviet Union, Saddam now bid for the west's favour as the Shah's natural heir as the "strong man" of the Gulf.

In the terrible eight-year struggle that followed, the Ayatollah's Iran remorselessly turned the tables on the Iraqi aggressor, recovered all its conquered territory, and, in a series of fearsome "human wave" offensives, tried to conquer Iraq, and turn it into the world's second "Islamic Republic".

That would have been a geopolitical upheaval of incalculable consequences. To forestall it, the west, beneath a mask of outward neutrality, put its weight behind one unlovely regime because it found the other unlovelier still. While the frightened, oil-rich Gulf furnished cash, the west furnished conventional weapons, and the means to manufacture a whole array of unconventional ones: nuclear, chemical and biological. Almost miraculously, Saddam held out, until, in July 1988, Khomeini drank from what he called "the poisoned chalice" of a ceasefire.

Of course, Saddam hailed this, his "first Gulf war", as a victory. Though what possible victory there could have been in an outcome which, in addition to hundreds of thousands of dead, wounded and captured, immense physical destruction and economic havoc, left Iraq on a permanent war footing, still seeking to renegotiate the status of the Shatt al-Arab?

Even if he could not officially admit it, he had good reason to give his people some recompense for their sufferings. He made as if to offer them two things, material betterment and some democratisation. But he cannot have been serious about either. Thanks to the ravages of his "Qadisiyah", he had no money for economic reconstruction. And, in another great volte-face, he staged a virtual counter-revolution against the one ideal of Ba'athism, its socialism, which he had made a passable attempt to put into practice. Worse, the main beneficiaries of the economic revisionism were the Tikriti pillars of his regime, now corrupt as well as despotic.

With the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu, the east European dictator he most closely resembled, Saddam abandoned talk of "the new pluralist trends" he discerned in the world. Indeed, he persisted, more surrealistically than ever, in the despot's law: the more disastrous his deeds the more they should be glorified. His cult of personality expressed itself most overbearingly in monumental architecture, where the public - an amazing array of bizarre or futuristic memorials to his "Qadisiyah" - merged with the private (his proliferating palaces) in grandiose tribute to all the attributes, bordering on the divine, ascribed to him.

It reflected a degree of control that enabled him, amazingly, to embark, within two years of the first, on his "second Gulf war", and then, more amazingly still, to survive that yet greater calamity in its turn. It was a resort to the classic diversionary expedient, a flashy foreign adventure, of the dictator in trouble at home. He cast himself once again as the pan-Arab champion, boasting that, having secured the Arabs' eastern flank against the Persians, he was now turning his attention westwards, with the aim of settling scores with the Arabs' other great foe, the Zionists. He threatened "to burn half of Israel" with his weapons of mass destruction, thrilling large segments of an Arab public desperately short of credible heroes.

But instead of Israel, it was Kuwait which, on the night of August 2 1990, Saddam attacked, or, rather, gobbled up in its entirety. Hardly had he done that than, to appease Iran, he unilaterally re-accepted the Algiers agreement on the Shatt al-Arab. It was the most breathtaking of his volte-faces; even as he dragged his people into another unprovoked war, he was in effect telling them that, in the first, they had shed all that blood, sweat and tears for nothing.

The Kuwait invasion was the ultimate excess, whimsy and Promethean delusion of the despot: the belief that he could get away with anything. Yet nothing had encouraged this excess like the west's indulgence of his earlier ones. Sure, it had never loved him. But neither had it protested at his use of chemical weapons against Iran. It had contented itself with little more than a wringing of hands when he went on to gas his own people.

In March 1988, in revenge for an Iranian territorial gain, he wiped out 5,000 Kurdish inhabitants of Halabja; then, the war over, he wiped out several thousand more in "Operation Anfal", his final, genocidal attempt to solve his Kurdish problem. In effect, the west's reaction had been to treat the Kurds as an internal Iraqi affair; exterminating them en masse may have briefly stirred the international conscience, but it tended, if anything, to reinforce the existing international order.

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But now that he was so ungratefully, so shockingly threatening this order itself, the west finally awoke to the true nature of the monster it had nurtured. Before long, Saddam faced an American-led army of half a million men assembled in the Arabian desert.

He did not blench. And for a few months he won adulation as the latter-day Saladin, who, after Kuwait, would go on to liberate Palestine. He said his army was eagerly awaiting the coalition's great land offensive to reconquer Kuwait; in "the mother of all battles", Iraq would "water the desert with American blood".

But he stood no chance. For a month, allied aircraft rained high-tech devastation on his army, air force, economic and strategic infrastructure. He panicked, ordering his army's withdrawal from Kuwait. It was not enough for the allies. As their ground forces swept almost unopposed through Kuwait, then into southern Iraq, the withdrawal became a rout. They could have marched on Baghdad. He caved in utterly, accepting every demand that the allies made. Only then did they cease their advance.

They had shattered most of his "million-man army" except for its elite Republican Guards, held in reserve to defend the regime against the wrath of the people. And this time their wrath was truly unleashed. The two oppressed majorities, Shias and Kurds, staged their great uprisings. These began spontaneously, when a Shia tank commander, having fled from Kuwait to Basra, positioned his vehicle in front of one of those gigantic, ubiquitous murals of the tyrant and addressed it thus: "What has befallen us of defeat, shame and humiliation, Saddam, is the result of your follies, your miscalculations and your irresponsible actions."

But the uprisings foundered on the rock of Saddam's residual strength, western betrayal and, in the south, their own disorganisation, vengeful excesses and failure to distance themselves from Iranian expansionist designs. Exploiting the Sunni minority's fear that if he went, so would many of them, in the most horrible of massacres, Saddam sent in his guards. Dreadful atrocities accompanied the slow reconquest of the south. And when the Guards turned north, the whole population of "liberated" Kurdistan fled in panic through snow and bitter cold to Iran and Turkey.

The television images of that grim stampede caught the measure of western betrayal. Four weeks previously, President George Bush senior had urged the Iraqis to rise up. But when they did so, he turned a deaf ear to their pleas for help. "New Hitler" Saddam might be, but he was also the only barrier against the possible break-up of Iraq itself. Saudi Arabia, for one, could not tolerate the prospect. It told the US it would work to replace Saddam with an army officer who would keep the country in safe, authoritarian, Sunni Muslim hands.

Saddam was saved again. And for 12 more years he hung on, as his people sank into social, economic and political miseries incomparably greater than those which had propelled him into Kuwait. Tikriti solidarity continued to preserve him against putsch and assassination. And never again would the people stage an uprising without assurance of success. Only the west could provide that. But the West, preoccupied with other crises, was paralysed.

It would, or could, not withdraw from what, after the Gulf war, it had put in place, a curious, contradictory amalgam of UN sanctions that penalised the Iraqi people, not its rulers, a moral commitment to safeguard "liberated" Kurdistan, an ineffectual "no-fly zone" over the Shia south.

But it also feared to go further in and, completing the logic of what it had begun, join forces with a serious Iraqi opposition that could bring the tyrant down and keep the country in one piece thereafter. This was inertia, which, the longer it lasted, the more dearly it would pay for in the end. Every now and then confrontations erupted between the world's only superpower and this most exasperating of "rogue states"; they arose out of Saddam's attempts to break out of his "box", via some renewed threat to Kuwait, an incursion into the western-protected Kurdish enclave, or - most persistently - showdowns over the UN's mission to divest Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.

In the last of them, in 1998, his elite military and security apparatus took a four-day pounding from the air. Heavy though this was, it proved to be the last, symbolic flourish behind which the Clinton administration acquiesced in what, with the expulsion of the arms inspectors, was a diplomatic victory for Saddam.

In the end, it was less his own misdeeds that brought the despot down, but those of the man who, for a while, supplanted him as America's ultimate villain, Osama bin Laden. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, but he fell victim none the less to the crusading militarism, the new doctrine of the pre-emptive strike, the close identification with a rightwing Israeli agenda, that now took full possession of the administration of George Bush junior. Iraq became the first target among the three states (with Iran and North Korea) that it had placed on its "axis of evil", and with the launch of the invasion by the US, UK and their allies in March 2003, Saddam's days were numbered.

However, three years passed between his capture and his execution yesterday. In December 2003, following a tip-off from an intelligence source, US forces found him hiding in an underground refuge on a farm near Tikrit, where his life had begun. It was the middle of the next year before he was transferred to Iraqi custody, and in July 2004 the former president appeared in court to hear criminal charges. Another year passed before the prosecution was ready to proceed with counts related to the massacre in the small Shia town of Dujail in 1982. The trial at last opened in October 2005 and the proceedings were immediately adjourned. Saddam, who two months earlier had sacked his legal team, pleaded innocence. A second trial on war crimes charges relating to the 1988 Anfal campaign opened on August 21 this year. He refused to enter a plea, and episodes of black farce, which characterised his earlier appearances in court, recurred, with the judge switching of his microphone because of his interruptions, and ejecting him from the court four times. The trial was adjourned on October 11, but on November 5 the court handed down a guilty verdict and sentenced Saddam to death by hanging.

Saddam married Saida Khairallah in 1963. Their sons Uday and Qusay (obituaries, July 23 2003) were killed by American forces; they had three daughters.

· Saddam Hussein abd al-Majid, politician, born April 28 1937; died December 30 2006.

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Hussein faced grim end at gallows

BAGHDAD (AP) — Clutching a Quran and refusing a hood, Saddam Hussein went to the gallows before sunrise Saturday, executed by vengeful countrymen after a quarter-century of remorseless brutality that killed countless thousands and led Iraq into disastrous wars against the United States and Iran.
In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate the former dictator's death. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he heard the news.

"Now all the victims' families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence," said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 130 kilometers south of Baghdad.

"We are looking for a new page of history despite the tragedy of the past," said Saif Ibrahim, a 26-year-old Baghdad resident.

But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death.

"The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior," said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque.

State-run Iraqiya television initially reported that Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, also were hanged. However, three officials later said only Saddam was executed.

"We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run Iraqiyah.

Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told the Associated Press that Saddam struggled when he was taken from his cell in an American military prison but was composed in his last moments.

He said Saddam was clad completely in black, with a jacket, trousers, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb.

Shortly before the execution, Saddam's hat was removed and Saddam was asked if he wanted to say something, Askari said.

"No I don't want to," Askari, who was present at the execution, quoted Saddam as saying. Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.

"Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a hood," Askari said. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab."'

Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, Askari said. The neighborhood is home to the Iraqi capital's most important Shiite shine, the Imam Kazim shrine.

Askari said the government had not decided what to do with Saddam's body.

Photographs and video footage were taken, Rubaie said.

"He did not ask for anything. He was carrying a Quran and said: 'I want this Quran to be given to this person,' a man he called Bander," he said. Rubaie said he did not know who Bander was.

"Saddam was treated with respect when he was alive and after his death," Rubaie said. "Saddam's execution was 100% Iraqi and the American side did not interfere."

The station earlier was airing national songs after the first announcement and had a tag on the screen that read "Saddam's execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq's history."

President Bush said that Saddam's execution marks the "end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops" and cautioned that his death will not halt the violence in Iraq. The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq, with the toll reaching 108.

Yet, Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas, "it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from a town where assassins tried to kill the dictator in 1982. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

U.S. troops cheered as news of Saddam's execution appeared on television at the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in eastern Baghdad. But some soldiers expressed doubt that Saddam's death would be a significant turning point for Iraq.

"First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then when there were none, it was that we had to find Saddam. We did that, but then it was that we had to put him on trial," said Spc. Thomas Sheck, 25, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "So now, what will be the next story they tell us to keep us over here?"

The execution was carried out around the start of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic world's largest holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. Many Muslims celebrate by sacrificing domestic animals, usually sheep.

Sunnis and Shiites throughout the world began observing the four-day holiday at dawn Saturday, but Iraq's Shiite community — the country's majority — was due to start celebrating on Sunday.

Maliki had rejected calls that Saddam be spared, telling families of people killed during the dictator's rule that would be an insult to the victims.

"Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him, and there will be no review or delay in carrying out the sentence," Maliki's office quoted him as saying during a meeting with relatives before the hanging.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said Saddam "was the head of injustice and this (execution) is a clear message to anyone who thinks of following the track of terrorism and killing. This is the end of this man after 35 years."

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch criticized the execution, calling Saddam's trial "deeply flawed."

"Saddam Hussein was responsible for massive human rights violations, but that can't justify giving him the death penalty, which is a cruel and inhuman punishment," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program.

The hanging of Saddam, who was ruthless in ordering executions of his opponents, will keep other Iraqis from pursuing justice against the ousted leader.

At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.

Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds.

Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday 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.

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

A senior official at the Iraqi defense ministry 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.

In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.

One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings.

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The message called on Iraqis to put aside the sectarian hatred that has bloodied their nation for a year and voiced support for the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency against U.S.-led forces, saying: "Long live jihad and the mujahedeen."

Saddam urged Iraqis to rely on God's help in fighting "against the unjust nations" that ousted his regime.

Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.

"This is the end of an era in Iraq," Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country."

Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.

Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.

In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.

Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy.

During that war, as part of the wider campaign against Kurds, the Iraqi military used chemical weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians.

The economic troubles from the Iran war led Saddam to invade Kuwait in the summer of 1990, seeking to grab its oil wealth, but a U.S.-led coalition inflicted a stinging defeat on the Iraq army and freed the Kuwaitis.

U.N. sanctions imposed over the Kuwait invasion remained in place when Saddam failed to cooperate fully in international efforts to ensure his programs for creating weapons of mass destruction had been dismantled. Iraqis, once among the region's most prosperous, were impoverished.

The final blow came when U.S.-led troops invaded in March 2003. Saddam's regime fell quickly, but political, sectarian and criminal violence have created chaos that has undermined efforts to rebuild Iraq's ruined economy.

While he wielded a heavy hand to maintain control, Saddam also sought to win public support with a personality cult that pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports and shops and on Iraq's currency.