UNITED BENETTON of COLORS

06 November, 2006 Saddam to hang, but Iraq's perched on a knife-edge

BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death yesterday, but such is his divisive influence that the verdict could cost many more Iraqi lives.

The city of Baghdad and four other provinces in Iraq were like a ghost town as officials enforced a one-day nationwide curfew fearing that the judgment could inflame nationalist and sectarian passions and escalate the daily deluge of violence.

Officials set up road-blocks and banned vehicles on the streets. Baghdad's international airport was also shut.

Analysts warn that the verdict, which comes a year after the trial started, will widen the already yawning chasm between the country's warring Sunni and Shia communities.

While the sprawling east Baghdad suburb of Sadr City erupted with joy at the news that the hated despot was bound for the gallows, there was an angry reaction on Saddam's home turf in Sunni regions in the north and west.

"Give him to us, we will execute him ourselves," the Sadr City mob chanted.

Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Al Malki, a Shia and a long-term opponent of the former Sunni-dominated regime, reflected the mood in his own community when he declared: "The Iraqi martyrs now have the right to smile."

But the mood in Sunni towns was darker and talk of conspiracy rife.

"The hanging of the former Iraqi president is part of an American scheme. He was a symbol of liberation in Iraq," declared Dr Muzahim Allawi, a university professor, in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.

The former dictator appeared visibly shaken when Judge Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman sentenced him to death by hanging.

He was found guilty for "wilful killing" as part of his indictment for crimes against humanity, in his role in ordering the deaths of 148 Shia villagers in the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982.

"Long live the people, down with the traitors," Saddam , 69, shouted, interrupting the court session. "God is great. You are the servants of the occupiers. Long live Iraq."

Dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, he held a copy of the Quran in his left hand. "Don't push me, boy," he barked at a court guard as the judge ordered him to be led out.

Saddam's half-brother and intelligence chief Barzan Al Tikriti was also sentenced to death, as was Awad Ahmed Al Bandar, who was chairman of the so-called Revolutionary Court that ordered the Shias executed.

The former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan received a life sentence.

The tribunal's spokesman and chief investigative judge Raed Al Juhi said Saddam's appeal would begin on Monday and its deliberations would last a month.

Attorneys for the former Iraqi president and some United States leftists suspect the Bush administration arranged for the verdict to be presented just ahead of the US congressional elections tomorrow. Yet American policy observers are sceptical about the impact it would have on the election.

Mr Stephen Hess at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, said that the impact would "be relatively modest".

Most US voters already "have a pretty strong idea about how they feel about Iraq and how it affects their vote", he added. But it is "possible" that the Saddam verdict could sway undecided voters.

"And possibly it will used by some people who are left-wing bloggers to say, 'Hey, isn't (it) some sort of a conspiracy?'" he said, referring to the timing of the verdict.

Posted by THE SAINT :: Monday, November 06, 2006 :: ---------------oOo---------------