Iraq's highest appeals court upheld the death sentence for
Saddam Hussein, Iraq's national security adviser said Tuesday.
"The appeals court approved the verdict to hang Saddam," said
the official, Mouwafak al-Rubaie.
On November 5, an Iraqi court sentenced Saddam to the gallows
for the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single Shi'ite town after
an attempt on his life there.
The decision of the appeals court must be ratified by President
Jalal Talabani and Iraq's two vice-presidents. Talabani opposes the
death penalty but has, in the past, deputized a vice-president to
sign an execution order on his behalf a substitute that has been
legally accepted.
Once those steps have been taken, Saddam and the others would be
hanged within 30 days.
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Raed Juhi, a spokesman for the High Tribunal court that convicted
Saddam, said the Iraqi judicial system would ensure that Saddam is
executed even if Talabani and the two vice-presidents do not ratify
the decision. "We'll implement the verdict by the power of the
law," Juhi said without elaborating.
An official on the High Tribunal court said the appeals court
also upheld death sentences for Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half
brother and intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, and Awad
Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, which issued
the death sentences against the Dujail residents.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security
reasons, said the appeals court had concluded that the sentence of
life imprisonment for former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan was
too lenient, and it returned his file to the High Tribunal. Ramadan
had been convicted of premeditated murder in the Dujail case.
The High Tribunal official said the appeals court demanded the
death penalty for Ramadan in a letter to the High Tribunal. The
official said the High Tribunal had received a copy of the appeals
court's decision upholding the death sentence for Saddam.
Saddam said those who were killed had been found guilty in a
legitimate Iraqi court for trying to assassinate him in 1982.
Televized, the trial was watched throughout Iraq and the Middle
East as much for theatre as for substance. Saddam was ejected from
the courtroom repeatedly for his political harangues, and his
half-brother and co-defendant, Ibrahim, once showed up in long
underwear and sat with his back to the judges.
The nine-month trial had inflamed the nation, and three defence
lawyers and a witness were murdered in the course of its 39
sessions.
Saddam was found hiding with an unfired pistol in a hole in the
ground near his home village north of Baghdad in December 2003,
eight months after he fled the capital ahead of advancing American
troops.
(China Daily December 27, 2006)
