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Shiites celebrate execution

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 31, 2006

BAGHDAD - Iraqis awoke Saturday to television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam Hussein's neck and his white-shrouded body, the predawn work of black-hooded hangmen.

In Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, victims of his decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Hussein in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of Iraq.

There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from sectarian violence was not far off the daily average - 92 from bombings and death squads.

The U.S. military reported the death of another American soldier, bringing the total for December, the deadliest month of the year, to 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have been killed since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

On the day of Hussein's execution, Sunni loyalists in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, marched with Hussein pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and gunmen paraded and fired into the air in support of Hussein in Tikrit, his hometown.

Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Hussein was sentenced to death Nov. 5.

The responses within Iraq to Hussein's death echoed the larger reaction across the Middle East, with his enemies rejoicing and his defenders proclaiming him a martyr. While Iranians and Kuwaitis welcomed the death of the leader who led wars against each of their countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the execution prevented exposure of the secrets and crimes the former dictator committed during his brutal rule.

Some Arab governments denounced the timing of the 69-year-old former president's hanging just before the start of the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha. Libya announced a three-day official mourning period and canceled all celebrations for Eid.

Within Iraq and across the world, the airwaves were alive with pictures of Hussein in death, a bruise on his cheek, his neck elongated and twisted impossibly to the right - grisly proof that the man who had tormented and killed so many during a bloody quarter-century rule was truly dead.

But some Iraqis - like 34-year-old Haider Hamed, a candy store owner in east Baghdad - wondered what would really change with the execution of Hussein, who was just four months shy of his 70th birthday.

"He's gone, but our problems continue," said the Shiite Muslim, whose uncle was killed in one of Hussein's many brutal purges. "We brought problems on ourselves after Saddam because we began fighting Shiite on Sunni and Sunni on Shiite."

Arab satellite television channels said Hussein's body had been be returned to Tikrit for burial todaynext to his sons Uday and Qusay in the main cemetery in the nearby town of Ouja, where Hussein was born. The sons and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the Americans in Mosul in July 2003.

State-run Al-Iraqiya television later confirmed the body had been handed to the Salahuddin province governor and the leader of Hussein's Albu-Nassir clan.

Um Abdullah, a Sunni and teacher in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, said she would wear black to mourn the city's favorite son. "Saddam will be a hero in our eyes," she said.

Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took into the streets, carrying pictures of Hussein, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance.

Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 went into the streets to protest the execution.

Among minority Sunnis there was deep anger, born not only of Hussein's execution but of the loss of their decadeslong political and economic dominance with Hussein as their leader.

"The president, the leader, Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs," said Yahya al-Attawi, who led prayer at a towering Sunni mosque constructed by Hussein in Tikrit.

There were cheers at the cafeteria of a U.S. outpost in Baghdad as soldiers having breakfast learned Hussein had been hanged.

But members of the Army's 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, on patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said the execution wouldn't get them home any faster - and therefore didn't make much difference.

"Nothing really changes," said Capt. Dave Eastburn, 30, of Columbus, Ohio. "The militias run everything now, not Saddam."

[Last modified December 31, 2006, 00:15:14]