BAGHDAD, Iraq – Defiant, raging and arrogant to the end, Saddam Hussein trembled and shouted “God is great” as he was sentenced to hang.
“Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!” Hussein cried out.
Then bailiffs took the arms of Iraq’s once all-powerful leader, and the man the United States went to war to drive from power walked steadily from the courtroom with a smirk on his face.
The chief judge, Raouf Abdul-Rahman, sentenced Hussein to the gallows Sunday for crimes against humanity, convicting the former dictator and six subordinates for a nearly quarter-century-old case of violent suppression in this land of long memories, deep grudges and sectarian slaughter.
Shiites and Kurds, who had been tormented and killed in the tens of thousands under Hussein’s iron rule, erupted in celebration – but looked ahead fearfully for a potential backlash from the Sunni insurgency that some believe could be a final shove into all-out civil war.
A round-the-clock curfew imposed before the verdict helped avert widespread bloodshed, but police said 72 people were killed or found dead nationwide by daybreak, and worries grew about what will happen when the curfew is lifted.
The former Iraqi dictator and six subordinates were convicted and sentenced for the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single Shiite town after an attempt on his life there.
The nine-month trial had inflamed the nation, and three defense lawyers and a witness were murdered in the course of its 39 sessions.
Televised, the trial was watched throughout Iraq and the Middle East as much for theater as for substance. Hussein was ejected from the courtroom repeatedly for his political harangues, and his half-brother and co-defendant, Barzan Ibrahim, once showed up in long underwear and sat with his back to the judges.
With justice for Hussein’s crimes done, the U.S.-backed Shiite prime minister called for reconciliation and delivered the most eloquent speech of his five months in office.
“The verdict placed on the heads of the former regime does not represent a verdict for any one person. It is a verdict on a whole dark era that was unmatched in Iraq’s history,” Nouri al-Maliki said.
Hussein 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.
Twenty-two months later, he went on trial for ordering the torture and murder of nearly 150 Shiites from the city of Dujail. Hussein said those who were killed had been found guilty in a legitimate Iraqi court for trying to assassinate him in 1982.
Ibrahim, Hussein’s half brother and intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, was sentenced to join the former leader on the gallows, as was Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujail residents.
Iraq’s former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Three defendants were given up to 15 years in prison for torture and premeditated murder. Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid and his son, Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid, were party officials in Dujail, along with Ali Dayih Ali. They were believed responsible for the Dujail arrests.
A local Baath Party official, Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted for lack of evidence.
In the streets of Dujail, a Tigris River city of 84,000, people celebrated and burned pictures of their former tormentor as the verdict was read. In Baghdad, the Shiite bastion of Sadr City exploded in jubilation.
But in Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, not far from Dujail, 1,000 people defied the curfew and carried pictures of the city’s favorite son through the streets. Some declared the court a product of the U.S. “occupation forces” and condemned the verdict. Policemen wept in the streets.
“By our souls, by our blood we sacrifice for you, Saddam,” the Tikrit crowds chanted.
The death sentences automatically go to a nine-judge appeals panel, which has unlimited time to review the case. If the verdicts and sentences are upheld, the executions must be carried out within 30 days.
A court official told The Associated Press that the appeals process was likely to take three to four weeks once the formal paperwork was submitted. If the verdicts are upheld, those sentenced to death would be hanged despite Hussein’s second, ongoing trial for allegedly murdering thousands of Iraq’s Kurdish minority.
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