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January 7th,
2007 - Before Hanging, a Push for Revenge and a Push Back
From the U.S. |
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Before
Hanging, a Push for Revenge and a Push Back From the U.S. By John F. Burns New York Times January 7, 2007 This
article was reported by John F. Burns, James Glanz, Sabrina Tavernise and
Marc Santora and written by Mr. Burns. Baghdad,
Jan. 6 - When American soldiers woke Saddam Hussein in his cell near Baghdad
airport at 3:55 a.m. last Saturday, they told him to dress for a journey to
Baghdad. He had followed the routine dozens of times before, traveling by
helicopter in the predawn darkness to the courtroom where he spent 14 months
on trial for his life. When
his cell lights were dimmed on Friday night, Mr. Hussein may have hoped that
he would live a few days longer, and perhaps cheat the hangman altogether. According
to Task Force 134, the American military unit responsible for all Iraqi
detainees, Mr. Hussein “had heard some of the rumors on the radio about
potential execution dates.” But never one to understate his own importance,
he had told his lawyers for months that the Americans might spare him in the
end, for negotiations to end the insurgency whose daily bombings rattled his
cellblock windows. As
Mr. Hussein prepared to walk out into the chill of the desert winter, dressed
in a tailored black overcoat, that last illusion was shattered. After being
roused and told that he was being transferred to Iraqi custody, a task force
statement e-mailed to The New York Times a week later revealed, “he
immediately indicated that he knew the execution would soon follow.” “As
he left the detention area, he thanked the guards and medics for the
treatment he had received,” said Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, spokesman for the
task force. Mr. Hussein was then driven to a waiting Black Hawk helicopter
for a 10-minute flight to the old Istikhbarat prison in northern Baghdad, where
a party of Iraqi officials awaited him at the gallows. “During this brief
period of transfer, Saddam Hussein appeared more serious,” the task force
said. The
time as the helicopter took off was 5:05 a.m., and Mr. Hussein had 65 minutes
to live. But as he flew over Baghdad’s darkened suburbs, he can have known
little of the last-minute battle waged between top Iraqi and American
officials — and among the Americans themselves - over whether the execution,
fraught with legal ambiguities and Islamic religious sensitivities, should go
ahead. American
opposition to executing him in haste centered partly on the fact that the Id
al-Adha religious holiday, marking the end of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to
Mecca, began for Sunnis at sunrise on Saturday. In Baghdad, the sun was to
rise at 7:06 a.m. Iraqi government officials had promised the hanging would
be over before the dawn light began seeping through the palms that shade the
capital’s streets. The
taunts Mr. Hussein endured from Shiite guards as he stood with the noose
around his neck have made headlines around the world, and stirred angry
protests among his fellow Iraqi Sunnis. But the story of how American
commanders and diplomats fought to halt the execution until midnight on
Friday, only six hours before Mr. Hussein was hanged, is only now coming into
focus, as Iraqi and American officials, in the glare of international outrage
over the hanging, compete with their versions of what happened. Tensions Boil Over It
is a story of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, trying to
coerce second-tier American military and diplomatic officials into handing
over Mr. Hussein, first on Thursday night, then again on Friday. The American
push back was complicated by the absences of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and
the top American military commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who were both
out of Iraq on leave. The American message throughout was that rushing Mr.
Hussein to the gallows could rebound disastrously, as it did. It
is a story, too, of the Americans disagreeing among themselves. After a final
call to Mr. Maliki at 10:30 p.m. Friday, American and Iraqi officials said,
Mr. Khalilzad concluded that there was no prospect of persuading the Iraqis
to delay the execution and passed that message to Washington. The conclusion
found little favor with the military, who were the ones who had to transport
Mr. Hussein to the gallows. For
General Casey and Mr. Khalilzad, close partners here, the messy ending for
Mr. Hussein was made worse by the confirmation this week that Mr. Bush will
soon replace both men as he refashions his Iraq war policy. There
were disputes among the Iraqis as well. At least one senior judge from the
tribunal that sentenced Mr. Hussein to die, and three American lawyers who
worked closely with the Iraqis at his trials, fought their own rearguard
battle, telling fellow Iraqis how surprised they were that he received the
death sentence in the narrow case that produced it - the “systematic
persecution” of Dujail, a small Shiite town north of Baghdad, after an
alleged assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein there in 1982. In
interviews with dozens of American and Iraqi officials involved in the
hanging, a picture has emerged of a clash of cultures and political
interests, reflecting the widening gulf between Americans here and the Iraqi
exiles who rode to power behind American tanks. Even before a smuggled
cellphone camera recording revealed the derision Mr. Hussein faced on the
gallows, the hanging had become a metaphor, among Mr. Maliki’s critics, for
how the “new Iraq” is starting to resemble the repressive, vengeful place it
was under Mr. Hussein, albeit in a paler shade. The
hanging spread wide dismay among the Americans. Aides said American commanders
were deeply upset by the way they were forced to hand Mr. Hussein over, a
sequence commanders saw as motivated less by a concern for justice than for
revenge. In the days following the hanging, recriminations flowed between the
military command and the United States Embassy, accused by some officers of
abandoning American interests at midnight Friday in favor of placating Mr.
Maliki and hard-line Shiites. But
for Mr. Maliki’s inner circle, the hanging was a moment to avenge decades of
brutal repression by Mr. Hussein, as well as a moment to drive home to Iraq’s
five million Sunnis that after centuries of subjugation, Shiites were in
power to stay. At the “White House,” as his officials now describe Mr.
Maliki’s headquarters in the Green Zone, a celebratory dinner began Friday
night even before the Americans withdrew their threat not to hand over Mr.
Hussein. An
Iraqi who attended the hanging said the government saw the Americans as
wasting time with their demands for a delay until after the four-day Id
al-Adha holiday, and for whatever time beyond that required to obtain the
legal authorizations they considered necessary. For the Americans to claim
the moral high ground afterward by disavowing the hanging, the Iraqi said,
was disingenuous. “They
cannot wash their hands, this is a joint responsibility,” he said. “They had
the physical custody, and we had the legal custody. At one point, I asked,
‘Is it our call or is it your call?’ They said, ‘It’s your call.’ I said, ‘If
it’s our call, we’ve made the decision.’ ” Legal niceties could not save Mr.
Hussein, he said, concluding, “The man has to go.” In
a speech on Saturday, a week after the hanging, Mr. Maliki showed that he
remains as angry as the Americans. Hitting out at governments and human
rights organizations around the world that have condemned the hanging, he
said they were hypocritical. “We’re wondering where these organizations were
during the crimes of Anfal and Halabja,” he said, referring to Mr. Hussein’s
persecution of Iraqi Kurds. “Where were they during the mass graves and the
executions and the massacres that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?” Differing Timelines The
countdown to the hanging began eight weeks earlier, on Nov. 5, as Raouf
Abdel-Rahman, the chief judge in the Dujail case, passed death sentences on
Mr. Hussein and two associates, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Mr. Hussein’s
half-brother, and Awad al-Bandar, chief judge of Mr. Hussein’s revolutionary
court, for crimes against humanity in the hanging of 148 men and boys from
the Shiite town. “Go to hell, you and the court!” Mr. Hussein yelled as
bailiffs ushered him out. The
widespread expectation was that the appeal of the death sentences would run
for months, allowing time for the more notorious Anfal case, involving charges
of genocide in the killing of 180,000 Kurds, to be completed before Mr.
Hussein was hanged. American lawyers in the embassy’s Regime Crimes Liaison
Office, the behind-the-scenes organizer of the trials, predicted Mr.
Hussein’s execution in the spring. When
the tribunal’s appeals bench announced that it had upheld the death sentences
on Dec. 26, three weeks into the appeal, even prosecutors were stunned.
Defense lawyers said Mr. Hussein was being railroaded under pressure from Mr.
Maliki, who told a BBC interviewer shortly after the Dujail verdict that he
expected the ousted ruler to be hanged before year’s end. The
suspicion that the judges had submitted to government pressure was shared by
some of Americans working with the tribunal, who had stifled their growing
disillusionment with the government’s interference for months. Among a host
of other complaints, the Americans’ frustrations focused on the government’s
dismissal of two judges seen as too indulgent with Mr. Hussein, and its
failure to investigate seriously when three defense lawyers were killed. The
appeals court’s apparent eagerness to fast-forward Mr. Hussein to the gallows
- and the scenes at the execution itself - was, for some of the Americans,
the last straw. On
the Thursday before the hanging, American military officials were summoned.
Both Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey were on vacation, so the American team
handling negotiations with Mr. Maliki and his officials was headed by Maj.
Gen. Jack Gardner, head of Task Force 134, the detainee unit, and Margaret
Scobey, head of the embassy’s political section. Iraqi
officials said neither carried much weight with Mr. Maliki, who had learned
through bruising confrontations to be wary of alienating Mr. Khalilzad and General
Casey, both of whom have direct access to President Bush. At the Thursday
afternoon meeting, tempers frayed. According to an Iraqi legal expert at the
meeting, Iraqi officials demanded that the Americans hand over Mr. Hussein
that night, for an execution before dawn on Friday. General
Gardner responded with demands of his own, for letters affirming the legality
of the execution from Mr. Maliki, President Jalal Talabani and the chief
judge of the high tribunal that convicted Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi legal expert
said. The focus was on two issues: a constitutional requirement that Iraq’s
three-man presidency council approve all executions, and a Hussein-era law
forbidding executions during religious holidays. Mr.
Talabani, a death penalty opponent, refused to sign off on the hanging, but
did sign a letter for Mr. Maliki saying he had no objections if the
government went ahead. The Iraqis, bolstering their case, said that the
Hussein tribunal’s own statute, drafted by the Americans, placed its rulings beyond
review. They dismissed the holiday ban on executions, saying Iraq’s death
penalty law had been suspended by the Americans in 2003 and that the new
Iraqi Parliament, in reviving it in 2004, had not reinstituted the ban. An
Iraqi participant who opposed the hanging said that Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr.
Maliki’s national security adviser, said angrily, “This is an Iraqi issue,”
and added, “Who is going to execute him anyway, you or us?” When the
Americans insisted they would not hand over Mr. Hussein without the letters,
another Iraqi official exploded: “Just give him to us!” By
Thursday evening, pressures for a quick hanging were growing. Esam al-Gazawi,
a Hussein lawyer, said by telephone from Jordan that his legal team had been
denied a final visit to Camp Cropper, the American detention center, and that
they had been told to send somebody to collect Mr. Hussein’s personal
belongings. Around
midnight on Thursday, the meeting broke up, and General Gardner contacted
commanders at Camp Cropper to tell them to stand down. By then, the American
command had entered what it called its “X-hour sequence,” a 10-hour countdown
to the execution that provided a timeline for everything the Americans needed
to do to ensure Mr. Hussein’s “secure and dignified” delivery to the
execution site. Negotiations
resumed Friday morning. In Phoenix, 10 time zones away, General Casey was
monitoring the exchanges in signals traffic from Baghdad. American military
officials remained opposed to an immediate hanging, telling Mr. Maliki that
beyond the legal issues, there was a question of his government’s need to
gain international support by carrying out the hanging in a way that could
withstand any criticism. “We
said, ‘You have to do it by international law, you have to do it in accordance
with international standards of decorum, you have to establish yourselves as
a nation under law,’ ” an American official recounted. When Mr. Maliki said
the Americans should respect Iraq’s right to decide matters for itself,
American officials said, one of the Americans said: “Forget about us. You’re
in front of the international community here. People will be watching this.” The
arguments continued deep into the Iraqi night. General Gardner and Ms. Scobey
returned at one point to the former Republican Palace, the American
headquarters in the Green Zone, seeking Washington’s advice. Workarounds for
the legal problems were discussed. At
10:30 p.m., Ambassador Khalilzad made a last-ditch call to Mr. Maliki asking
him not to proceed with the hanging. When the Iraqi leader remained adamant,
an American official said, the ambassador made a second call to Washington
conveying “the determination of the Iraqi prime minister to go forward,” and
his conclusion that there was nothing more, consistent with respect for Iraqi
sovereignty, that the United States could do. Senior
Bush administration officials in Washington said that Mr. Khalilzad’s
principal contact in Washington was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and
that she gave the green light for Mr. Hussein to be turned over, despite the
reservations of the military commanders in Baghdad. One official said that
Ms. Rice was supported in that view by Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national
security adviser. “It
literally came down to the Iraqis interpreting their law, and our looking at
their law and interpreting it differently,” the official said. “Finally, it
was decided we are not the court of last appeal for Iraqi law here. The
president of their country says it meets their procedures. We are not going to
be their legal nannies.” Mr.
Khalilzad had suggested that the Iraqis get a written ruling approving the
execution from Midhat al-Mahmoud, the chief judge of Iraq’s Supreme Judicial
Council; Mr. Mahmoud refused. Then, the Iraqis played their trump card: a
call to high-ranking Shiite clerics in the holy city of Najaf, asking for
approval from the marjaiya, the supreme authority in Iraqi Shiism. When his
officials reported that they had it, Mr. Maliki signed a letter authorizing
the hanging. It was 11:45 p.m. The
Americans suggested that foreign reporters be invited to the hanging, along
with United Nations observers. American commanders feared the concern for
procedure might be swept away by the urge for revenge. “Anybody who’s been
involved in a firefight will tell you there’s a moment when rage takes over,”
an American official said. The Iraqis dismissed the idea of outside observers
and assembled an execution party of 14 Shiite officials and a Sunni cleric
invited to help Mr. Hussein with his prayers. The ‘X-Hour Sequence’ At
Camp Cropper, the X-hour sequence was running for a second night. Helicopters
were positioned. Special security measures went into effect along the flight
path. The Americans dispatched sniffer dogs along the route of Mr. Hussein’s
final steps and into the execution chamber, the only time any American set
foot there. Before
he left the camp, Mr. Hussein bade farewell to American soldiers who guarded
him during the latter stages of his 1,110 days in solitary confinement.
There, and again after the helicopter carrying him landed at 5:15 a.m. at
Camp Justice, the American military post in the Kadhimiya district of
northern Baghdad that encloses the Istikhbarat prison, the former dictator
went man to man, thanking each of the Americans for looking after him. At
5:21 a.m., he was led into the prison, a forbidding, four-story concrete
building that once housed the headquarters of Mr. Hussein’s military
intelligence agency and now is a base for an Iraqi Army brigade. The
Americans took him to a holding room and exchanged papers with the prison
governor formalizing the transfer. “At
that point, he was dignified,” Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the American
command’s chief spokesman, said at a briefing later. “He said farewell to his
interpreter. He thanked the military police squad, the lieutenant who was the
squad leader, the medical doctor we had present, the American colonel who was
on site.” He added, with emphasis, “And then we had absolutely nothing to do
with any of the procedures or any of control mechanisms or anything from that
point forward.” At
5:30 a.m., the Iraqis took over. An American official who watched said Mr.
Hussein’s demeanor “changed in the Iraqi prison when the Iraqi governor
assumed control of him.” Mr. Hussein had long since told his American captors
that he trusted them but not the Iraqis. “He
was still dignified, but he was scornful,” the American official said. Mr.
Rubaie, the security adviser, said that when Mr. Hussein stepped into the
execution block, an ill-lighted concrete structure behind the main prison
building where thousands of hangings took place under Mr. Hussein, he seemed
composed. “He
made some joking remarks,” he said. “He said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid,’ as if
I was going to be hanged. I didn’t reply, but one of the guards shouted, ‘You
did bad things to Iraq.’ And he said, ‘I made this backward country into an
advanced and prosperous nation.’ ” After
that, the story is taken up by the illicit cellphone video that has caused an
uproar among Iraqi Sunnis and across the world, showing Mr. Hussein erect on
the gallows in his black overcoat and gray beard, staring ahead, and
answering back, as taunts flowed from Shiites gathered in front of the
platform. Mr.
Hussein got halfway through the most sacred of Muslim prayers. “There is no
God but God, and Muhammad. ...” The trapdoor clanged open. It was 6:10 a.m. Securing the Body Before
7 a.m., helicopters ferried Iraqi officials back to the Green Zone, along
with Mr. Hussein’s body. For nearly 17 hours, Mr. Maliki and his officials
remained locked in a dispute with Sunni officials and leaders of Mr.
Hussein’s Albu Nasir tribe, with Mr. Maliki’s officials refusing to release
the body, saying they wanted no shrine to him. Throughout, the body, in a
white shroud, remained inside the ambulance in the parking lot behind Mr.
Maliki’s office. For
the last time, the Americans intervened, flying a delegation from Tikrit, Mr.
Hussein’s hometown, to Baghdad, and returning them 110 miles north again
after Mr. Maliki, at nearly midnight, agreed to let the body go. It
was transferred to a pine coffin, loaded onto the open back of a police
pickup, and driven back to Landing Zone Washington, the Green Zone helipad. Upset
by events in the execution chamber, and concerned at attracting any fresh
anger from Iraqi Sunnis, the Americans ordered their troops not to touch Mr.
Hussein’s body after the execution, even as it was loaded and unloaded from
their helicopters. This
left Iraqi officials to unload the stretcher carrying the body when the
execution party returned to the Green Zone from the prison. Mr. Rubaie, the
security adviser, said he helped carry the stretcher bearing the body from
the helicopter to a waiting ambulance. “We
weren’t walking, we were jogging” to the ambulance, he said. “This was a
chapter we wanted to get done and finished with. We just wanted it to be
over.” David
E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington, and Iraqi employees of The
New York Times from Baghdad. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07ticktock.html Saddam aides ‘to die this week’ BBC News January 7, 2007 The Iraqi government has
said that the executions of two senior associates of former leader Saddam
Hussein, will take place some time during the week. This is despite an appeal
from the new UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, that they should not go
ahead. Government spokesman Ali
al-Dabbagh said the execution orders for Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar
had been signed, and there was no way back. Saddam Hussein's execution
has led to a chorus of international criticism. Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti,
Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bandar, a former chief
judge, were convicted along with Saddam Hussein for their part in the killing
of 148 Shia Muslims in the Iraqi village of Dujail in the 1980s. Mr Dabbagh said that while
the government respected the UN's view, it also had to respect the victims of
Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. "Certainly, the
execution orders have been signed and are ready to be implemented," he
said. "There are some
technical preparations that need to take place in order to carry out the
court's decision." Saddam Hussein was hanged on
30 December amid chaotic scenes. UK Prime Minister Tony
Blair, who had been criticised for saying nothing on the issue, has now
joined the critics. His officials now say the
prime minister does believe the way Saddam Hussein was taunted and filmed
before he was hanged was completely wrong. Earlier, the man expected to
succeed Mr Blair as prime minister, Chancellor Gordon Brown, described events
at the execution as deplorable and completely unacceptable. ‘Domestic affair’ Mr Ban has been criticised
for failing to state the UN's policy of opposing the death penalty. He said capital punishment
"was for each and every member state to decide" - words that seemed
at odds with the UN's policy of opposing the death penalty. But in a letter to the Iraqi
representative at the UN, Mr Ban urged restraint in carrying out death
sentences imposed by the Iraqi High Tribunal. The UN said Mr Ban's letter
"also refers to the secretary general's view that all members of the
international community should pay due regard to all aspects of international
humanitarian and human rights laws". Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
Maliki has reacted angrily to the international outcry over the execution. He said his government could
review relations with any country that criticised the action. Mr Maliki said the hanging
was a "domestic affair" for the benefit of Iraq's unity, adding
that the former president had received a fair trial. International protest has
continued, however. On Saturday Rome's mayor lit up the Colosseum to
highlight Italy's support for a global ban on the death penalty. Italy this week began a
diplomatic push to have the issue taken up by the UN General Assembly. Former Italian Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi called the execution a "political and
historic error". Several Sunni Arab countries
have criticised the hanging as sectarian. Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak said it had turned the former leader into a martyr. External link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6239199.stm |