Region | Iraq
US sought to delay execution
The US ambassador in Baghdad urged Iraq's prime minister to delay the execution of Saddam Hussain by two weeks but relented in the face of concerted pressure, a senior Iraqi official has said.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 January 3, 2007
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Baghdad: The US ambassador in Baghdad urged Iraq's prime minister to delay the execution of Saddam Hussain by two weeks but relented in the face of concerted pressure, a senior Iraqi official has said.
Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs held angry public mourning rituals following Saturday's hanging and the government is investigating how Shiite guards taunted and filmed the former president on the gallows. A no-holds-barred Internet video of the execution has inflamed already fiery sectarian passions.
"The Americans wanted to delay the execution by 15 days because they weren't keen on having him executed straight away," said the senior Iraqi official, who was involved in the events leading to Saddam's death and spoke on condition of anonymity.
"But during the day (on Friday) the prime minister's office provided all the documents they asked for and the Americans changed their minds when they saw the prime minister was very insistent. Then it was just a case of finalising the details."
US forces handed over Saddam only at the last moment before he was hanged at dawn, following late-night negotiations between Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and senior US officials, several Iraqi government sources have said.
Officials only confirmed the hanging would go ahead just four hours before Saddam went to the gallows shortly after 6am. Two aides convicted with him will not be hanged till later.
The senior Iraqi official said US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told Al Maliki on Friday he would not hand over the 69- year-old ousted strongman unless Al Maliki produced key documents, including a signed authorisation from President Jalal Talabani and a death warrant signed by the prime minister.
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Two Iraqi cabinet ministers said on Friday two legal issues were holding up any hanging first whether a presidential decree was required and second whether the start of the Eid Al Adha holiday on Saturday should stay the execution, a provision of the Saddam-era Iraqi Penal Code.
Talabani has been reluctant to sign death warrants for personal reasons but the constitution gives him no power of pardon for war crimes.
In the end, officials said, presidency advisers provided a letter simply stating that no presidential decree was needed and that senior clerics told Maliki the holiday provided no grace.
Al Maliki was shown on state television signing the death warrant in red ink in images released by his office along with film of the hangman placing the noose around Saddam's neck.
Grainy video apparently shot on a mobile phone surfaced on the Internet after the official footage, showing observers exchanging taunts with Saddam that including chanting "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada!"
"There were a few guards who shouted slogans that were inappropriate and that's now the subject of a government investigation," Sami Al Askari, an adviser to Al Maliki and one of the official observers, said.
Many commentators in the Arab press say the footage makes the execution look like a sectarian lynching rather than an act of law, and have complained that the hanging should not have taken place during the Eid Al Adha holiday.
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