Saddam Hussein hung today for his crimes against humanity

Al Arabiya TV Reports Saddam Hussein Has Been Executed

















BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein, the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century, was taken to the gallows and executed Saturday, Iraqi state-run television reported.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. 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.

Also hanged were Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court.

State-run Iraqiya television news announcer said "criminal Saddam was hanged to death and the execution started with criminal Saddam then Barzan then Awad al-Bandar."

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

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

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.

Final Hours
U.S. official: execution 'within a matter of hours'
Statement echoes report Iraqi official says execution to happen by 10 p.m. ET as witnesses gather in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein's date with death appears to be just hours away. The former president of Iraq will be hanged "within a matter of hours," a Bush administration official told FOX News on Friday.

"The final meetings have taken places," the official said, adding in Iraqis have requested Saddam be turned over to them. "The process is now in the final stage."

Earlier, the Associated Press reported via a top Iraqi official that Saddam would be hanged before 10 p.m. ET Friday night (6 a.m. Saturday in Baghdad).

The official witnesses to the impending execution gathered Friday in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone in final preparation for his hanging, and state television broadcast footage of his regime's atrocities.

Saddam's chief lawyer said the U.S. had turned over custody of the mass murderer to Iraqi officials, one of the last steps necessary before the execution. An Iraqi parliamentarian, Methal Al Aloser, backed up the lawyer's claims. Al Aloser said not only had Saddam been handed over, but all papers and documents were finalized and the execution will be soon.

But Bush administration sources, apprised of Al Aloser's remarks, reaffirmed that Saddam Hussein remains in U.S. custody.

Two State Department officials also told FOX News Saddam was still being held by Americans. "We are absolutely certain he has not been handed over," one official said. The official said the handover might not happen for a few more hours — or possibly even for a few more days.

"There is no reason for delays," said Munir Haddad, an Iraqi judge on the appeals court that reviewed Saddam's case. He also said the execution will occur by Saturday.

An unnamed Iraqi government official in Baghdad told the Associated Press that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had signed the Butcher of Baghdad's death warrant.

Al-Maliki said "our respect for human rights requires us to execute him, and there will be no review or delay in carrying out the sentence."

Meanwhile, Saddam's attorneys asked a U.S. judge to block his transfer to the custody of Iraqi officials poised to carry out his execution.

Hussein's lawyers asked for an emergency restraining order aimed at stopping the U.S. government from relinquishing custody of the condemned former Iraqi leader to Iraqi officials, a spokeswoman for a federal court in Washington D.C. said.

A similar request by the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, was denied Thursday and is under appeal. Al-Bandar also faces execution. The Justice Department argued in that case that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction to interfere with the judicial process of another country.

A U.S. source in Baghdad said Al-Maliki wanted to carry out the execution as early as Thursday night, but that it was delayed for logistical reasons, and because of confusion over the Iraqi constitution and the law that governs the tribunal that convicted him of murder.

The Iraqi prime minister said those who oppose the execution of Saddam were insulting the honor of his victims. His office said he made the remarks in a meeting with families of people who died during Saddam's rule.

"Nothing and nobody can abrogate the ruling" upholding Saddam's sentence, al-Maliki said.

Najeed al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's defense team, told FOX News that while sentence hasn't yet been carried out, "we're at a stage where we're requesting his body be handed over to his family."

Al-Nauimi also predicted Saddam will be defiant until the end, and go the gallows "smiling, and saying verses of the Koran."

Saddam was notified Thursday that his death sentence had been upheld. "His reaction was 'I was expecting that,' " al-Nauimi quoted Saddam as saying. Saddam then met with his half brothers and said goodbye to them.

Iraqi General Abdl Kareem Khalaf told FOX News that emergency procedures have been implemented in the former dictator's Salahadin province, where Saddam's hometown of Tikrit is, as well as Diyala and Mosul provinces, which have Sunni majorities. The emergency measures include more Iraqi army and police forces and more checkpoints.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said U.S. forces were on high alert.

"They'll obviously take into account social dimensions that could potentially led to an increase in violence which certainly would include carrying out the sentence of Saddam Hussein," Whitman said.

A video of the execution is expected to be released.

In his Friday sermon, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf 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, known as SCIRI, the dominant party in al-Maliki's coalition.

One Bush administration official downplayed the possibility of a "Goering scenario" occurring, a reference to the high-ranking Nazi official Hermann Goering, who cheated the hangman at Nuremberg by swallowing a cyanide capsule slipped to him. "[Saddam]'s not going to have any friends in the room," the official said, referring to Saddam at the moment of his execution.

Iraq's highest court on Tuesday rejected Saddam's appeal against his conviction and death sentence for the killing of 148 Shiites in the northern city of Dujail in 1982. The court said the former dictator should be hanged within 30 days.

While Saddam's death for the Dujail massacre appears imminent, he's still facing trial for other atrocities. Saddam faces genocide charges related to a coordinated campaign that killed up to 100,000 Kurds, according to Human Rights Watch. During that campaign, Saddam used chemical weapons, which killed some 30,000 Iraqis and Iranians.

Al-Nauimi said the timing of Saddam's imminent execution is "political revenge being carried out by the present government," adding the trial process was biased.

Some international legal observers and human rights groups have called Saddam's trial unfair because of alleged interference by the Shiite-dominated government. There has also been internal debate among Iraqis about legal procedures surrounding the timeframe and whether the presidency is required to approve the execution.

"The law does not say within 30 days, it says after the lapse of 30 days," said Busho Ibrahim, deputy justice minister. There was no immediate explanation for the conflicting claims.

Chronicle of the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein:

Hussein's regime killed, tortured, raped and terrorized the Iraqi people and its neighbors for over two decades.

Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of Saddam's actions.

Saddam had approximately 40 of his own relatives murdered.

1980-88: Iran-Iraq war left 150,000 to 340,000 Iraqis and 450,000 to 730,000 Iranians dead.

1983-1988: Documented chemical attacks by Iraqi regime caused some 30,000 Iraqi and Iranian deaths.

1988: Chemical attack on Kurdish village of Halabja killed approximately 5,000 people.

1987-1988: Iraqi regime used chemical agents in attacks against at least 40 Kurdish villages.

1990-91: 1,000 Kuwaitis were killed in Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

1991: Bloody suppression of Kurdish and Shi'a uprisings in northern and southern Iraq killed at least 30,000 to 60,000. At least 2,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed during the campaign of terror.

2001: Amnesty International report: "Victims of torture in Iraq are subjected to a wide range of forms of torture, including the gouging out of eyes, severe beatings and electric shocks... some victims have died as a result and many have been left with permanent physical and psychological damage."

Human Rights Watch: Saddam's 1987-1988 campaign of terror against the Kurds killed at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds.

Refugees International: "Oppressive government policies have led to the internal displacement of 900,000 Iraqis."

Iraq's 13 million Shiite Muslims, the majority of Iraq's population of approximately 22 million, faced severe restrictions on their religious practice.

FBI: Iraqi government was involved in a plot to assassinate former President George Bush during his April 14-16, 1993, visit to Kuwait.

The Iraqi regime has repeatedly refused visits by human rights monitors.

From 1992 until 2002, Saddam prevented the U.N. Special Rapporteur from visiting Iraq.

(Sources: Office of the White House Press Secretary: Life Under Saddam Hussein: Past Repression and Atrocities by Saddam Hussein's Regime; April 4, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/04/iraq/20030404-1.html; "Iraq: Crimes Against Humanity," State Department, May 7, 2002, http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/crimes; "Iraq: U.S. Alleges Role in Bush Death Plot," Facts on File May 20, 1993; http: http://www.2facts.com/; http://www.2facts.com/stories/temp/10882temp1993053677.asp)
Timeline of Saddam Hussein's Life and Career:

April 28, 1937: Born in village of Uja near desert town of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, Iraq.

1957: Joins underground Baath Socialist Party.

1958: Arrested for killing brother-in-law, a communist; spends six months in prison.

Oct. 7, 1959: Participates in Baath team that ambushes Iraqi strongman Abdel-Karim Kassem in Baghdad, wounding him. Saddam wounded in leg, flees country.

Feb. 8, 1963: Returns from Egypt after Baath takes part in coup that overthrows and kills Kassem.

July 30, 1968: Takes charge of internal security after Baath seizes power and authority passes to council headed by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam's cousin.

July 16, 1979: Takes over as president of Iraq from al-Bakr; launches purge of Baath.

Sept. 22, 1980: Sends army into Iran, setting off eight-year war.

July 8, 1982: Survives assassination attempt in Dujail, a mainly Shiite Muslim town 25 miles north of Baghdad. In retaliation, Saddam's security forces attack the town. (The events in Dujail were the subject of the criminal charges in Saddam's initial trial.)

March 28, 1988: Uses chemical weapons against Kurdish town of Halabja, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians.

Aug. 2, 1990: Invades Kuwait, leading to war with U.S.-led coalition that liberates Kuwait the following February.

March 1991: Crushes Shiite Muslim revolt in the south and Kurdish revolt in the north.

March 20, 2003: Missed by bombing attack as U.S.-led forces try force his ouster.

July 22, 2003: Sons Qusai and Odai killed in gunbattle with U.S. troops.

Dec. 13, 2003: Captured by U.S. soldiers in Tikrit.

June 30, 2004: Transferred into Iraqi custody.

July 1, 2004: Arraigned before judge and defiantly rejects charges of war crimes and genocide.

Dec.17, 2004: Sees Iraqi lawyer for the first time since his capture.

June 13, 2005: Shown in video being questioned about 1982 massacre in Dujail.

July 13, 2005: Faces first charges against him as tribunal chief judge says investigation into Dujail killings complete.

Aug. 23, 2005: Fires legal team.

Oct. 19, 2005: Pleads innocent as trial opens in Dujail case. It is immediately adjourned.

Oct. 20, 2005: Ohne of his defense attorneys is kidnapped and killed.

Nov. 8, 2005: Another defense attorney is killed in an ambush.

Dec 5, 2005: Denounces trial as public relations exercise after witnesses tell of horrors committed during his rule.

Dec 7, 2005: Refuses to enter court after telling tribunal to "go to hell" the night before. Judge eventually decides to press on without him.

Dec 21, 2005: Seventh session of trial begins. The next day the trial is adjourned until Jan. 24 after another turbulent session.

Dec 25, 2005: Saddam’s lawyers say they have asked the court for independent inquiry into claims his American captors tortured him.

Dec 29, 2005: Saddam's chief lawyer sends a letter to Bush saying he should be freed if the U.S. wants to end its problems in Iraq and earn the friendship of Arabs.

(Sources: AP: Events in the life of Saddam Hussein; 11/28/05; Key events in life of Saddam Hussein, Associated Press, 10/18/05; NPR, 10/18/2005 -
Timeline: Saddam's Violent Road to Trial -
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4961744; Reuters: Chronology of Saddam Hussein's trial; 15 Jan 2006; http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO531614.htm)
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BAGHDAD, Iraq — Within days of taking power, Saddam Hussein summoned about 400 top officials and announced he had uncovered a plot against the ruling party. The conspirators, he said, were in that very room.

As the 42-year-old Saddam coolly puffed on a cigar, names of the plotters were read out. As each name was called, secret police led them away. Some of the bewildered men cried out "long live Saddam Hussein" in a futile display of loyalty.

Twenty-two of them were executed. To make sure Iraqis got the word, Saddam videotaped the entire proceeding and distributed copies across the country.

The plot claim was a lie. But in a few terrifying minutes on July 22, 1979, Saddam eliminated his potential rivals, consolidating the power he wielded until the Americans and their allies drove him from office a generation later.

Saddam, who was hanged Saturday at age 69, ruled Iraq with singular ruthlessness. No one was safe. His two sons-in-law were killed on Saddam's orders after they defected to Jordan but returned in 1996 after receiving guarantees of safety.

Such brutality kept him in power through war with Iran, defeat in Kuwait, rebellions by northern Kurds and southern Shiite Muslims, international sanctions, plots and conspiracies.

In the end, however, brutality was his undoing. Trusting few except kin, Saddam surrounded himself with sycophants, selected for loyalty rather than intellect and ability.

And when he was forced out in April 2003, he left a country impoverished — despite vast oil wealth — and roiling with long suppressed ethnic and sectarian hatred.

On his rare public appearances, crowds would greet him with chants of "we sacrifice our blood and souls for you Saddam." But gradually, he became isolated from the Iraqi people, within a diminished circle of trusted advisers drawn mostly from his close family or his clan.

He ended up dragged from a hole by American soldiers in December 2001, bearded, disheveled and with his arms in the air. The pistol he kept to fight to the end was never fired.

Image and illusion were important tools for Saddam.

He sought to build an image as an all-wise, all-powerful champion of the Arab nation. His model was the great 12th century warrior Saladin, who captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders and, coincidentally, was born like Saddam in the Tikrit area of northern Iraq.

Yet his style was closer to an Iraqi clan chief, doling out favors in return for absolute loyalty while dealing harshly with anyone who questioned his authority.

He promoted the illusion of a powerful Iraq — with the world's fourth largest army and weapons of terrible destruction.

Yet it was all hollow. His army crumbled in weeks when confronted by the Americans and their allies in Kuwait in 1991.

And in 2003, his capital — the vaunted regime fortress supposedly ringed by steel with inhabitants eager to sacrifice themselves in its defense — fell to a single U.S. brigade task force.

Saddam's weapons of mass destruction proved a bluff to keep the Iranians, the Syrians, the Israelis — and the Americans — at bay. His own scientists didn't have the nerve to tell him that his dreams of weaponry were beyond the country's industrial capability.

Instead, Saddam squandered vast sums on opulent palaces with marble hallways, plush carpeting, expensive antique furniture.

All of that was a universe from the harsh poverty into which Saddam was born on April 28, 1937, in the village of Ouja near Tikrit. His father, a landless shepherd, died or disappeared before he was born. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly.

The young Saddam ran away as a boy and lived with his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, a stridently anti-British, anti-Semitic man whose daughter, Sajida, would become Saddam's wife years later.

Under his uncle's influence, Saddam joined the Baath Party, a radical, secular Arab nationalist organization, at age 20. A year later, he fled to Egypt after taking part in an attempt to assassinate the country's ruler, Gen. Abdul-Karim Qassim, and was sentenced to death in absentia.

Saddam returned four years later after Qassim was overthrown by the Baath. But the Baath leadership was itself ousted within eight months and Saddam was imprisoned. He escaped in 1967 and took charge of the underground Baath party's secret internal security organization.

He swore he would never tolerate the internal dissent that he blamed for the party losing power.

In July 1968, Baath returned to power under the leadership of Gen. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who appointed Saddam, his cousin, as his deputy. Saddam systematically purged key party figures, deported thousands of Shiites of Iranian origin, supervised the state takeover of Iraq's oil industry, land reform and modernization — becoming the real power behind al-Bakr.

Al-Bakr decided in 1979 to seek unity with neighboring Syria, which was also under Baath party rule. Syria's president would become al-Bakr's deputy, and Saddam would be marginalized. Saddam forced his cousin to resign — and then purged his rivals in a party meeting six days later. Hundreds of others in the party and army were executed in the months that followed.

Saddam then turned his attention to the country's Shiite majority, whose clerical leaders had long opposed his secular policies. Saddam's fears of a Shiite challenge rose after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Shiite-dominated Iran in 1979.

On Sept. 22, 1980, Iraqi troops crossed the Iranian border, launching a war that would last eight years, cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides and devastated Saddam's plans to transform Iraq into a developed, prosperous country.

In the longest conventional war of the 20th century, the two countries fired missiles at each other's cities, Iran sent waves of youngsters to death on the front lines, and Iraqi warplanes bombed Iranian schools and even a jetliner unloading passengers at an Iranian airport.

In launching his war, Saddam evoked the memory of the 7th century Battle of Qadisiyyah, when Arab armies decisively defeated the Persians, opening what is now Iran to the Muslim faith. The 1980s war became known as "Saddam's Qadisiyyah," and for years after the conflict ended in stalemate, Iraqi currency still carried scenes from the ancient battle — along with Saddam's image.

After the Iranians counterattacked, Saddam turned to the United States, France and Britain for weapons, which those countries gladly sold him to prevent an outright Iranian victory. They turned a blind eye when Saddam ruthlessly struck against Iraqi Kurds, who lived in the border area and were dealing secretly with the Iranians.

An estimated 5,000 Kurds died in a chemical weapons attack on the town of Halabja in March 1988. The United States suggested at the time that the Iranians may have been responsible.

Only two years after making peace with Iran, Saddam invaded Kuwait, whose rulers had refused to forgive Iraq's war debt and opposed increases in oil prices that Iraq desperately needed to recover from the conflict with Iran.

Iraqi nationalists had never accepted the existence of an independent Kuwait, which they believed was established by British imperialism. Kuwait was annexed as the 19th province of Iraq.

The United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Iraq and a U.S.-led coalition attacked. "The great duel, the mother of all battles, has begun. The dawn of victory nears as this great showdown begins," Saddam said on Iraqi radio on Jan. 17, 1991.

But the Iraqis were driven out of Kuwait. The 1991 war triggered uprisings among Iraq's Shiites, brutally crushed by Saddam, and the Kurds, who carved out a self-ruled area under U.S. and British air cover.

Saddam boasted his survival was proof Iraq had won its war against America, a message that won him stature among many Arabs. But the sanctions were not lifted because the United States accused Saddam of retaining weapons of mass destruction.

His brutality was starkly illustrated when the defecting sons-in-law were killed. Their widows, however, forgave him. "He was a very good father, loving, has a big heart," Raghad Saddam Hussein told CNN in August 2003 while Saddam was on the run from U.S. forces. "He had so many feelings and he was very tender with all of us," Rana Hussein said in the same interview.

Saddam also sought to be a force in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In April 1990, hinting he had secret super-weapons, he declared: "By God, we will make the fire eat up half of Israel." During the Gulf War he fired Scud missiles into Israel, and during the Palestinian uprising a decade later he paid cash grants to families of suicide bombers.

Complete coverage is available in FOXNews.com's Iraq Center.

The U.N. sanctions remained in effect until his regime collapsed in 2003, devastating Iraq's economy and impoverishing a people who had been among the most prosperous in the Middle East. They also set the stage for the collapse of the regime itself.

The Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. focused attention on Saddam as a sponsor of terrorism. His refusal to meet U.N. demands for full disclosure of his illegal weapons program provided a justification for war.

As U.S.-led forces massed, Saddam claimed America's "devastating brutal instinct" had been harnessed by Zionism.

"Halt your evil doings against the mother of civilization ... the cradle and the birthplace of prophets and messengers," he warned the United States. "The entire nation will rise up in defense of its right to life, of its role and of anything it holds sacred ... Their arrows will be on the wrong track or will recoil to their breasts, God willing ... The martyrs of the nation will turn into green birds in paradise as the Merciful has promised."

An American-led force invaded on March 20, 2003. Within three weeks, Iraq's army had collapsed and Baghdad had fallen. U.S. Marines tore down Saddam's statue in the center of Baghdad and the dictator fled to his northern homeland.

His sons, Odai and Qusai, and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the Americans in Mosul in July 2003. When Saddam himself was captured the following December, Iraqis cheered and fired shots in the air. "The former dictator of Iraq will face the justice he denied to millions," President Bush said.

But as he went on trial in October 2005 before an Iraqi judge, his country was engulfed in an anti-American insurgency.

For Saddam, the trial was a pulpit to rail against the U.S. presence in Iraq in hopes of winning the approval of history if not an acquittal. In the early sessions, he strutted into court, grasping a Quran in one arm while waving the other at his fellow defendants.

"How can a judge like yourself accept a situation like this?" Saddam barked. "This game must not continue. If you want Saddam Hussein's neck, you can have it."

But the trial dragged on, the chief judge was replaced, and Saddam's manner calmed as he realized the inevitability of conviction and the death sentence that followed.