Saddam died defiantly - witnesses

2006-12-30 09:46

Baghdad - Ousted Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein died defiantly, say witnesses to his execution. He refused to wear a hood and shouted: "God is great!"

He was hanged inside one of his former torture centres on Saturday in the final act of a brutal 30-year tragedy that left the stage strewn with tens of thousands of corpses.

Officials who witnessed the execution said the 69-year-old former strongman remained defiant to the last, railing against his Iranian and American enemies and praising the rebels who have pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.

"He said he was not afraid of anyone," said Judge Moneer Haddad, a member of the panel of appeal court judges who had confirmed Saddam's conviction for crimes against humanity and who attended the pre-dawn execution.

Didn't see any remorse

National security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said in a series of broadcast interviews that the former strongman's final minutes were lived in the same spirit as his grandstanding appearances in an Iraqi court.

"One thing I can't explain, I have never seen any repentance, never seen any remorse there," said Al-Rubaie.

"When you reach the stage when that's it, that's the end, I think you tend to be right and honest with yourself and confess something," he added.

"But he was praising the mujahideen, he was praising the jihadis ... he was cursing the Persians and he was cursing the West as well," he said.

Rubaie said officials and even executioners had danced around the body afterwards.

"This is a natural reaction. These people have lost loved ones."

"The time of death was very, very close to 6.00am... It went like a blink of an eye -- he died very, very quickly - it couldn't have been quicker."

And with that Saddam - the burly sadist who slaughtered Iraq's Kurdish minority, invaded Iran and Kuwait and fought two disastrous wars with the United States - stepped off Iraq's political stage for good.

Co-accused's hangings postponed

Al-Rubaie said the Saddam's American jailers had handed him over to Iraqis and that there had been no US personnel in the building as the trapdoor dropped and the dictator's life was ended in a "100% Iraqi operation".

Saddam's and two co-accused - his half-brother and intelligence chief Barzan Hassan al-Tikriti and revolutionary court judge Awad Ahmed al-Bandar - were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on November 5.

Officials said that the execution of Saddam's aides had been postponed until after the Eid al-Adha religious holiday, which ends on Thursday.

- AFP