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Skriven 2006-12-31 19:18:04 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
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Ärende: For you Infidels, the Non-Believers.
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                           `I watched Saddam die'

Publication date: Sunday, 31st December, 2006

BAGHDAD, Sunday - The knock on the door came just before 6:00am. Saddam
Hussein's executioners were disguised with black balaclavas. He spent his
last minutes Saturday in the sordid bowels of Iraqi military intelligence
headquarters, once home to his own torturers and killers.

Just as the dawn call to prayer was beginning over the city, he was led,
shambling in leg irons, to the scaffold to pay the price for his crimes
against the Iraqi people.

"We took him to the gallows room and he looked like he wondered what was
going on," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi government's national
security adviser, who saw him die.
"He looked at the gallows not believing what was going to happen."

As the world reacted with mixed jubilation and condemnation to the
hanging, Rubaie said the deposed dictator muttered as he was taken to his
death: "Do not be afraid; it is where we all go."

Rubaie was among the 15 people in the ill-lit room that was Saddam's last
sight on earth. The former Iraqi dictator showed no remorse, said Rubaie,
speaking by telephone from Baghdad.

"He was respected throughout before and after the execution. We followed
rigorously international and Islamic standards."

After the dramas of Friday night, when Iraqi officials said Saddam's death
was imminent but his lawyers tried to stay his execution with an appeal to
a United States court, his fate was set early yesterday.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, had signed the death warrant
before going to celebrate his son's wedding, and the presidential council
had endorsed it.

The American jailers who had custody of Saddam were ordered to surrender
him to the Iraqi government. They offered him tranquillisers but Saddam
refused. "We received physical custody of Saddam Hussein around 5:30am
from the coalition forces, and we took over," said Rubaie.

As US troops stood guard outside, Saddam was first led to a sparse and
unheated holding room in the bowels of the headquarters of Iraqi military
intelligence.

He was left for about half an hour to contemplate his fate. Iraqi law
provides that a condemned man be allowed a final cigarette and a meal
before his execution.

"He was handcuffed and we took him and sat him down," said Rubaie. "There
was a judge, a deputy general, deputy minister of justice, deputy minister
of interior, a couple of other ministers, myself and a doctor." After
formalities they took him through "a huge file" of documents detailing his
trial. "The judge took him through the conviction. He was silent until he
saw a video camera, and then began shouting slogans such as `God is
great'.

He started his rhetoric: `Long live Islam, down with Persia', down with
this and that. He started shouting his head off. Rubaie made a last
gesture of mercy. "His handcuffs were a little bit tight, and hurt him,
and I instructed the guards to loosen them."

The formalities over, the four masked executioners stepped forward. Short,
tubby and dressed in leather jackets, they looked more like Al-Qaeda
killers in an amateur terrorist video than those responsible for carrying
out the sentence of death on a former head of state. Even though Saddam
had shrunk in stature since the days of his pomp, he towered over them.
He had dressed for death in clothes sewn by his personal Turkish tailor:
black trousers, shined black shoes, a starched white shirt, black pullover
and a black wool overcoat that protected him against the deep chill of his
remaining minutes. His hair was dyed his signature black, but he had heavy
bags under his eyes.

In sight of a new hemp noose hanging from the ceiling, the executioners
removed his handcuffs to tie his hands behind his back. As he stood close
to the trapdoor one wrapped a black scarf around his neck to shield it
from rope burns.
When they went to put the black hood over his head, he mumbled: "That
won't be necessary." The noose was slipped over his head.

He stood looking almost bewildered, and an executioner awkwardly tightened
the hand-coiled knot of the noose on the left side of his neck.
Even on the brink of death Saddam had not forgotten the video camera. Just
before he dropped through a trapdoor on a platform surrounded by red
railing, he shouted the Muslim profession of faith, "God is great and
Muhammad is his prophet" and "Palestine is Arab".

"He was standing with the rope round his neck," said Rubaie. "The
executioner started reading verses from the Koran, `There is no God but
Allah and Muhammad is his messenger'. He repeated it twice and (Saddam)
went down in no time." The hangman pulled a lever, and Saddam dropped
silently about 3ft through a metal trapdoor. It was 6:10am. Rubaie said he
died instantly. "It was so, so quick, totally painless and there was no
movement after that."

Sami al-Askari, who represented the prime minister at the hanging, said he
"heard his neck snap".

Saddam hung from the rope for about 10 minutes, watched by the audience of
about 15 people who could see him dangling under the platform. A doctor
checked that his heart had stopped, then one of the executioners untied
him. There was blood on the rope.

The executioners put him in a white body bag and took photographs as proof
for diehard loyalists that Saddam was dead.

Munir Haddad, an Iraqi appeals court judge, also witnessed the execution.
He said afterwards: "One of the guards present asked Saddam whether he was
afraid of dying. Saddam said, `Why would I? I spent my whole life fighting
the infidels and the intruders.'

"Another guard asked him, `Why did you destroy Iraq, and destroy us? You
starved us, and you allowed the Americans to occupy us'. His reply was, `I
destroyed the invaders and... I destroyed the enemies of Iraq, and I
turned Iraq from poverty into wealth'.

"Saddam was normal and in full control. He said, `This is my end. I
started my life as a fighter and as a political militant. So death does
not frighten me'.

"He said, `We're going to heaven, and our enemies will rot in hell'. "When
he was taken to the gallows, the guards tried to put a hood on his head,
but he refused. Then he recited verses from the Koran. Some of the guards
started to taunt him."

The guards chanted the name of the Shi'ite firebrand cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr. "Who is Moqtada?" - Saddam sneered.

This article can be found on-line at:
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/13/540536


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