Court upholds death penalty for Saddam

IRAQ:The appeals court has upheld the death sentence passed on Saddam Hussein on November 5th for the 1982 killing of 148 Shias at the town of Dujail following a failed assassination attempt on the Iraqi leader.

Under Iraqi law, Saddam must be hanged within 30 days.

Aref Shahin, head of the nine-member court, said that the government had the right to set the date, starting the 30-day period from tomorrow. "After 30 days, there will be an obligation to carry out the sentence," he added.

Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, who opposes the death penalty, is refusing to sign the execution order, but one or other of the country's vice-presidents is expected to do so. The execution is likely to take place without fanfare and in a secret place. Saddam's request to be shot as a soldier rather than hanged as a criminal has been rejected.

The tribunal also rejected the appeals of former intelligence chief Barzan al-Takriti, Saddam's half-brother, and revolutionary court chief Awad Hamaed Bandar. Both are sentenced to hang.

The decision to reconfirm Saddam's death sentence at this time is certain to antagonise the Kurds, who are the Shias' partners in the ruling coalition.

A second trial of the former president and other defendants for the murder of an estimated 180,000 Kurds during the 1988 "Anfal" campaign to relocate them from the northern border with Iran has been taking place concurrently with the appeals process.

While Mr Shahin said that the trial would go ahead without Saddam, his absence from the proceedings - before the prosecution and defence have presented their cases and a verdict is announced - could prompt the Kurds to protest against the primacy given to the deaths of a relatively small number of Shias over the slaughter of tens of thousands of Kurds.

Politicians and jurists who approve the death penalty contend that Saddam's execution will close a bloody chapter in Iraq's long and violent history.

However, instead of opening a chapter characterised by democracy and coexistence, his fall inaugurated an equally violent chapter in which he was irrelevant.

His demise will not halt the Sunni insurgency or heal the country's sectarian rifts.

Although the US and its Iraqi allies have tried to portray the insurgents as "Saddamists" and "dead-enders" to deprive them of national legitimacy, the resistance has always been independent of the former ruling clique.

The capture of Saddam in December 2003 did not diminish the ferocity of resistance attacks, as the US had expected, and the proclamation of the death sentence in early November coincided with a militia killing spree, making it one of the worst months for Iraqi civilian and US military fatalities.

Resistance operations, largely directed against US troops and allied Iraqi forces, are now overshadowed by Shia-Sunni sectarian warfare, but the execution of Saddam could exacerbate rather than reduce these ongoing conflicts.

Insurgents may boost the number of attacks on US and Iraqi government forces, while Sunni gunmen may step up killings of Shias, prompting a violent response from Shia militias and affiliated police and army units.

The impending execution of Saddam and the other two defendants is certain to elicit protests from human rights advocacy organisations and legal authorities around the world.

Former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, one of Saddam's lawyers, called the trial a travesty of justice. The head of the team, Adnan Dulaimi, complained that access to the defendants was not granted and said that the defence had not been allowed to present its final arguments.

Human Rights Watch published a damning indictment of the conduct of the Dujail trial, arguing that there were so many legal flaws that the verdict was unsound. The group contended: "The imposition of the death penalty - an inherently cruel and inhumane punishment - in the wake of an unfair trial is indefensible."

The EU, where the death penalty has been banned in member countries, has called on Iraq not to carry out the sentence.

It is ironic that the appeal verdict should appear only days after an opinion poll revealed that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis believe that Iraq was a safer and better place to live during Saddam's regime than it is under the Shia-dominated government installed by the US after the war.