(Originally published by the Daily News on December 30, 2006. This story was written by Richard Sisk.)
Saddam Hussein swung from the gallows early today as the despot who dominated Iraq for nearly a quarter-century paid the ultimate price for his blood-soaked crimes.
Saddam, 69, was hanged at an undisclosed location in Baghdad just before 6 a.m. local time, Iraqi officials said.
“Saddam’s execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq’s history,” read a banner on state-run Iraqiyah television.
A doctor, a defense lawyer and a judge were among the official witnesses to the execution, which was videotaped, officials said. Photographs were also taken and expected to be made public to convince Iraqis the tyrant who had oppressed them for so long was really dead.
President Bush said his old nemesis had received “the kind of justice he denied” his own people, but warned that the execution would not end the violence in Iraq.
Saddam was in handcuffs and shackles, and refused to wear a hood as the noose was put around his neck.
“He seemed very calm. He did not tremble,” a senior official who witnessed the execution told Reuters, adding that Saddam died quickly.
But there were conflicting descriptions of the dethroned dictator’s demeanor as he faced the gibbet. Iraqi National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told Iraqiyah that Saddam had “totally surrendered” and showed no resistance as he was led into the execution chamber.
“He did not ask for anything. He was carrying a Koran,” Rubaie said, adding that Saddam appeared to be “a broken man” as he mounted the gibbet.
In his last words, Saddam urged Iraqis to forgive each other and warned them against “the Persians,” said Munir Haddad, the judge who witnessed Saddam’s execution. Saddam led Iraq into a disastrous eight-year war with neighboring Iran, formerly known as Persia.
“I spent my life fighting,” Haddad quoted Saddam as saying.
U.S. forces were braced for violence in case the deposed dictator’s reign of terror extends beyond the grave, but the only immediate reaction was jubilation. The Arabic satellite channel Arabiya reported that some witnesses danced with glee around the body.
Saddam’s half brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, also were hanged, Iraqiya said. But Rubaie said only Saddam was put to death, and that the others would be executed at a later date.
Iraqi officials had been eager to get the executions out of the way before the start at noon today of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim “feast of sacrifice” that marks the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Iraqi law – written under Saddam’s regime – prohibits executions during religious holidays.
Late last night, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the “red card” execution order.
“Our respect for human rights means we must implement the execution of Saddam and his aides,” Maliki said.
The government did not say what would be done with Saddam’s body. One of his daughters said from exile in Jordan that she wanted her father to be buried in Yemen until the situation in Iraq was more favorable.
In a long-shot bid to spare his life, U.S. lawyers for Saddam filed suit for a stay of execution in the U.S. District Court in Washington, but Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly denied that petition last night, saying the matter was out of her jurisdiction.
Saddam was captured in December 2003 by U.S. troops who pulled him from a filthy “spider hole.” On Nov. 5, he was convicted of approving the 1982 massacre of 148 Shiites in the northern Iraqi city of Dujail following a failed attempt to assassinate the tyrant. An appeals court approved the ruling Tuesday.
“After the endorsement of the court ruling,” Maliki said, “no one can prevent the execution sentence against Saddam. There will be neither a revision nor a delay.”
U.S. troops, already on high alert in the Baghdad chaos that many have called a civil war, braced for possible reprisals.
Several hours after the execution, a car bomb exploded in the Shiite city of Kufa in southern Iraq. There were reports of many casualties.
In Sadr City, a Shiite slum in Baghdad, people danced in the streets and others fired guns in the air to celebrate Saddam’s death.
A four-day curfew was slapped on Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit to prevent possible rioting.
With News Wire Services
