Looks like tha lad from Bagdad is about to find out if there really is a God.
I guess it’s about to be ashes to ashes dust to dust for the bearded one.
About an hour to go.
The clock is ticking.
[quote]
Lawyers for Saddam Hussein on Friday made a last-minute appeal to an American court to avert execution in Iraq, asking a judge to block his transfer from U.S. custody to the hands of Iraqi officials.
Hussein’s lawyers filed documents Friday afternoon asking 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.
The documents were being processed and were not immediately made public. The Justice Department had not yet responded to the request. [/quote]
breitbart.com/news/2006/12/29/D8MAODM80.html
I think this is good. Exhaust all legal avenues.[quote]
Ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was to be executed before sunrise on Saturday, officials said, amid fears of an insurgent backlash once he mounts the gallows.
An Iraqi judge who has been assigned to witness Saddam’s death, Moneer Haddad, told AFP that he had been summoned to attend the hanging within the coming few hours.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi official close to the office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that the former strongman’s execution would be carried out before sunrise marks the start of the festival of Eid al-Adha.
The only formality remaining, he said, was the transfer of Saddam from US military custody to Iraqi authority, but that this had been agreed and would not delay proceedings. [/quote]
breitbart.com/news/na/061229 … tf5qg.html
Saddy may soon be square with the House, but his mess remains.
A new chapter begins…maybe, if the transfer goes without a hitch, and if the Iraqis hang him on schedule.
jdstoic
Arab TV says he’s in the death house.
Iraqi TV says it just happened.
He’s gone!
I’m surprised it was so soon. Thoguht it was supposed to be in mid to late January.
Time to look out for revenge killings; after all, violence breeds violence and all that…
I’d say goodbye Saddam, but that comes from may God be with ye (you), which I refuse to say to such a murderous villain.
I personally find that to be barbaric and proof that the human race still has much evolving to do.
I agree.
Sitting in a tiny cell for the rest of his days would have been a lot better punishment.
Oddly enough, I find myself agreeing with you on this one. For some reason something just doesn’t seem right about it. Although I’m sure scores of Iraqi’s may not share our sentiments.
That’s one way to look at it. Another is that justice was served. Hussein was treated far better by those carrying out his death sentence than he afforded those he massacred. There’s nothing barbaric about his hanging IMO. If you want to debate capital punishment though, then start another thread on the subject.
Still, it might have been an interesting suggestion of a less malicious future if he was given life instead, especially given the concerns raised by the international jurors refarding the fairness of his trial.
HG
Heres to barbarism… 
Its rich to mention ‘morality’ and Saddam Hussein n the same sentence.
Saddam did not hang alone. Two other men were executed along with him.
One was a half-brother of his.
[quote]The men who were hanged alongside Saddam
(AFP),
30 December 2006
BAGHDAD - The two men hanged alongside Saddam on Saturday were Barzan Ibrahim Hassan Al Tikriti, one of Saddam’s three half-brothers and a former director of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service, and Awad Ahmed Al Bandar Al Sadun, former chief judge of the revolutionary court and deputy head of Saddam’s office.
Like Saddam, they were sentenced to death for their roles in the massacre of 148 Iraqi Shias from the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after a failed attempt on the former dictator’s life in 1982.
BARZAN IBRAHIM HASSAN Al TIKRITI: Detained on April 16, 2003, he was number 52 on the wanted list issued by US commanders after their March 2003 invasion, and five of clubs in a pack of playing cards issued to troops.
Hot-tempered and secretive, Barzan had a series of rows with other members of Saddam’s Tikriti clan, notably the president’s elder son, Uday, but family ties meant he was always welcomed back.
A 1988 dispute erupted over Barzan’s opposition to the marriage of one of Saddam’s daughters to a rival member of the Tikriti clan, Hussein Kamel Hassan, friends said.
And in 2003, Barzan opposed Saddam’s younger son, Qusay, succeeding his father as president.
But despite the disagreements, Barzan remained one of the president’s most trusted aides. He managed Saddam’s personal fortune until 1995 and is also believed to have coordinated covert purchases in Europe for the regime’s prized weapons programmes.
Being Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva from 1988 to 1998 gave him the perfect cover, and he is also believed to have set up arrangements to circumvent the UN sanctions clamped on Iraq after Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
He also coordinated Baghdad’s intelligence network in Europe and managed Saddam’s assets in European banks, according to opponents of the ousted regime.
He returned home in late 1998 after his wife died of cancer. A source close to Barzan said that during this period, he urged Saddam to abolish the ruling Revolution Command Council (RCC) and proposed forming a government of technocrats he himself would head.
Born in 1951, Barzan was still in his teens when he took part in the coup that brought his half-brother into the circles of power. A father of eight, he studied law and political science at Baghdad’s Al Mustansiriyah University.
US officials had characterized him as a member of ‘Saddam’s Dirty Dozen’, responsible for much of the torture and murder for which the regime became notorious.
The charges against him dated from when he headed the secret police, from early 1982 to late 1983, at the height of the devastating Iran-Iraq war.
He was accused of particapating in the 1982 Dujail massacre.
Barzan had been diagnosed with cancer and a number of calls were made for his release for treatment on humanitarian grounds.
AWAD AHMED Al BANDAR Al SADUN was a former chief judge of the revolutionary court and deputy head of Saddam’s office.
The 60-year-old Bandar was indicted on July 1, 2004, becoming the first judge to be tried for using his court to carry out political executions since Nazi judges were brought before the Nuremberg trials.
Bandar’s lawyer was abducted and executed the day after the trial started on October 19, 2005.
While some accused Bandar of simply having no experience as a judge, as with the Nuremberg cases the main argument revolved around judges’ accountability for enforcing unjust laws that were nevertheless ‘legal’.
As such, it was argued that Bandar was ‘only obeying orders’ but the court decided that Bandar’s request for execution orders was ‘in fact an order of murder and not a judgment issued by virtue of the law and in conformity with it.’
He was found guilty of ‘committing a deliberate crime against humanity’ and sentenced to death.
Controversial Italian lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano, a one-time member of Saddam’s legal team, said that the prosecution had failed to prove that Bandar’s court was a summary court as had been proven at Nuremberg and that as a result there was no basis for a conviction.
Instead, he said, the prosecution only proved that the judge was carrying out the orders of Saddam’s government.
Besides being in charge of so-called show trials, Bandar was also accused of sentencing 35 minors to death.
However, he insisted his trials were fair and that he never sentenced minors to die, saying on April 16 that: ‘The accused had all the the rights and were defended by their lawyers … I am a judge and my deep conscience does not allow to sentence someone under 20 to death.’
Khallej Times[/quote]
According to the BBC, it was broadcast on Iraqi TV. I wonder if it’ll be on youtube or other sites?
Buttercup -
Would you happen to have a link to thet BBC article?
I’ve read an interview with the “official” person who was assigned to make a video of the hanging and he said that his ‘film’ was taken immediately after the execution.
I’m curious as to what the story is.
I thought a cell-phone image might be floating around, but I think they took all of thse from the 20 or so people in attendance.
[quote]Saddam did not hang alone.[/quote]Yes he did
[quote]Two other men were executed along with him[/quote]No they weren’t.
You’re completely wrong, completely overflowing with wrongness…
TC, sorry, was doing something else. They have changed the story and it now says that footage of him being led to the gallows was broadcast! It definitely said that footage of the hanging was shown, before. Maybe they got different information or they changed it for clarity?
Buttercup -
Yes…I just found that also…
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6218485.stm
Here is the link to the videographer I mentioned:
msnbc.msn.com/id/16401644/site/newsweek/