December 30, 2006
Saddam Hanged at Dawn
The execution took place shortly before 6am (03:00 GMT) on Saturday at an Iraqi miltary facility in northern Baghdad.
Iraqi television later showed footage of Saddam being placed in a noose by hangmen, cutting away just before his execution.
The 69-year-old appeared calm, chatting+ to his hangmen as they wrapped his neck in black cloth and steered him towards the gallows
Iraqi television later showed footage of his body.
It was very quick. He died right away," an official Iraqi witnesses told the Reuters news agency.
"We heard his neck snap," said Sami al-Askari, a political ally of al-Maliki.
Another witness said: "He seemed very calm. He did not tremble."
As guards took him to the scaffold, according to witnesses, Saddam said: "There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet."++
Iraqi Shias in Sadr City celebrated the
death of the former Iraqi leader. | AFP from Al Jazeera
story | Al Jareeza
>Compare & constrast + &++ with: "His last words were equally defiant. "Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians."" from On the Gallows, Curses for US and "Traitors" By Marc Santora | New York Times
Update: 02/01/07 Baghdad - Hundreds of Sunni Arabs gathered to show their anger and grief for Saddam Hussein on Tuesday as the Iraqi government promised an investigation into illicitly filmed footage of Shi'ite officials taunting him on the gallows.
story | TruthOut
~So in Saddam's last minutes was he chatting, praising God & Mohammed, cursing & defiant or taunted by his hangmen?
Noteworthy as an example of the many uses the living can have for dead tyrants:
Al Jareeza's eye-witnesses to the execution report chatting and a calm prayerful Saddam; the NYTimes translator watching the video hears cursing and defiance; while his followers see Saddam being taunted by his jailers.
~I'm guessing Saddam's Sunni relatives are more outraged by the execution and its video then they are by the gallows taunting.
A frame grab from Biladi shows former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's body after his execution in Baghdad December 30, 2006. Hussein was hanged for crimes against humanity at dawn on Saturday....IRAQ OUT REUTERS/Biladi TV (IRAQ)| Yahoo News
~Yahoo News at this hour has time-stamped four versions of this image: AFP via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Dec 30 3:47 AM; AFP via Yahoo! Canada News - Dec 30 3:47 AM; AFP/Biladi TV via Yahoo! News - Dec 30 4:31 AM and Reuters via Yahoo! News - Dec 30 6:02 AM
Google News didn't post the above Reuters' screen grab until 21:00GMT. I don't understand the reason for Google's delay. Google automatically updates Reuters(?) image feeds sometime before 6:00AM EST and again at 21:00GMT? (AFP images don't appear on Google.)
Fox News at this hour has a slide-show of the execution with the same two Saddam images above. Which means if Fox News has the Biladi TV videos, it's only permitted to use the AFP/Reuters video grabs on it's news site? No other screen caps from those videos...because of copywrite restrictions?
When will the uncut version of Saddam's execution find its way to YouTube?
As of 22:00GMT Al Jareeza News did not show images of Saddam's dead body.
As of 23:45GMT CNN Video has no "execution" or "body" videos.
Was it necessary that the Americans allowed this execution to be video-taped? Was Saddam that much of a celebrity, that many Iraqis wouldn't believe he's dead unless they saw it with their own eyes?
Or was it neo-con Christian cruelty:the cherry on top of Bush's occupation of Iraq?
>from Salon: Saddam: The death of a dictator
Through the bumbling of the U.S.-backed regime, justice becomes revenge, and a despot becomes a martyr. By Juan Cole article
>Update: 5 Jan 07 Bush Wishes Saddams Death More Dignified
Bush spoke with Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki for nearly two hours Thursday in a conference call and voiced support for the probe, [into the taunts at the former Iraqi president moments before he dropped from the gallows] which is also pursuing how a cell phone was used to capture video of the execution. The images were leaked to the public.
"I wish that the proceedings had gone in a more dignified way," Bush said at a White House press conference with German chancellor Angela Merkel.The execution was carried out days after an Iraqi court upheld his November conviction and death sentence.
The release of the video sparked outrage among Iraq's minority Sunni Muslim population, which served as the base for Saddam's decades of rule. Shias in the room, some believed to be prison guards, were heard shouting at Saddam as the noose was tightened around his neck. One individual told him: "Go to hell."
story | IndiaTimes
also: Master Sgt. Robert Ellis, a senior medical adviser responsible for Hussein's care in Baghdad, praised the stoicism displayed by Hussein. “Saddam,” he said, “was gangsta.” A Texas 10-year-old who had seen video footage of the execution died after hanging himself from his bunk bed [STL Today][Reuters via MSNBC]
--from Harpers Weekly Review