A kangaroo court (the so-called High Iraqi Tribunal) had sentenced Saddam Hussein, his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim, and the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court Awad Hamed Al-Bandar to be hanged within 30 days. Yet the US administration, in a rash decision, pressured the Al-Maliki government to hang Saddam on Saturday the 30th of December, the first day of Islamic religious Addha holiday, in a blatant violation of the religious beliefs and laws of all Islamic countries, which ban the execution of any criminal during this holiday. The hanging also violated the Christian spirit of Christmas, and the Iraqi constitution penned down by Bremer. It exhibited spirit of vengeance. Sparing the life of Ibrahim and Al-Bandar clearly shows that Saddam's hanging was intent on demonizing Muslims in Iraq and around the World as well as inciting increased sectarian violence within Iraq.

Saddam's death sentence was decided a long time ago, in the late 1980's when he refused to open up Iraqi assets (and oil reserves) to Western corporations, when he invaded Kuwait, and when he subsequently took the decision to convert Iraq's reserve funds from Dollars into Euros.

Several assassination attempts had been planned, but failed miserably. The failed Dujail assassination attempt was one of such attempts, which resulted in the execution of 148 Shiites. Finally under the lies of alleged possession of WMD, "the freeing of Iraqis", and the "spreading of American democracy" British and American forces invaded Iraq in 2003.

Saddam was originally a CIA asset, recruited to assassinate the previous Iraqi president Abdel-Karim Qassem, who started taxing British and US oil companies as a first step in an attempt to nationalize Iraq's oil resources. After failing to assassinate Qassem, and being wounded in the process, Saddam escaped to Egypt, where he routinely visited the US embassy in Cairo.

Later when the CIA was able to topple Qassam's presidency, Saddam was sent back to Iraq to take on the position of Head of National Security. He later became president with the backing of the US. Saddam installed as head of State to prevent the nationalization of Iraq's oil industry as well as to quell the Arab Nationalist Movement in Iraq, integrated by Shi'a, Kurdish and Sunni Iraqis.

In the wake of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Saddam was pressured by Washington to wage war on Iran. Kissinger's famous statement "let them kill each other" describes the real nature of this eight years' war. The US administration supported both sides. It provided Saddam with weapons and intelligence, while also covertly supporting Iran. The US military industrial complex profited tremendously from the Iraq-Iran war.

The Arab Gulf rulers supported Saddam and handed him the necessary money to pay for his war against Iran. When the war was over Kuwait refused to forgive Saddam's wartime debt. It also opposed to increase the price of oil, as Saddam had proposed in OPEC with a view to financing Iraq's war debts. This confrontation ultimately led to the invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War I carpet bombing of withdrawing Iraqi troops. Although it was possible to topple Saddam's regime at that time, the US adminstration feared this would break their alliance with the frontline Arab states.

There is no question that Saddam was a ruthless dictator, like most of the Arab rulers, who were handed their political positions after WWII to keep the Arab World divided and separated, and to subdue their people. Yet with all his ruthlessness and despotic rule he enjoyed public support for the political positions he took. He built Iraq into the most technologically advanced Arab country. Next to the Palestinians, Iraqis were the most educated in the Arab world. Primary education was compulsory, higher education was free. Women's rights progressed in the context of secular Muslim state. Unlike the rest of the Arab rulers, the Iraqi government provided real homes rather than dirty refugee camps for Palestinian refugees. He also sent money to Palestinian fighters resisting Israeli occupation. Besides his support to Palestinians, Saddam stood defiant towards Israel, the US and Iran; he dispatched Iraqi tanks to protect Syria from Israeli attacks, gave Jordan support in the form of monetary and oil grants, resisted US demands in the wake of the Gulf War.

Although Saddam was ruthless towards any form of political opposition, much like most Arab rulers, whose crimes and tortures have not yet been exposed, his government, nonetheless, provided for the average Iraqi citizen.

The Hussein regime formally provided "security and safety" where people could walk the streets without fear of crimes.

The government also provided food rations while under the US sponsored sanctions regime following Gulf War I. Within a few months after the end of the first Gulf War, the Hussein government started rebuilding Iraq's civilian infrastructure, which had been destroyed by US bombings. This included roads and bridges, power stations, water desalination facilities, educational centers, and governmental services.

Saddam was tried by a kangaroo Iraqi Special Tribunal, whose judges had been specially assigned by the US military authorities. Its judges had been changed few times, and several of Saddam's lawyers were assassinated. This Tribunal convicted Saddam for crimes allegedly perpetrated in Dujail against 148 Iraqis, who were originally tried and sentenced to death by a legal Iraqi court for their alleged assassination attempt against president Saddam. The Tribunal overlooked Saddam's other more severe crimes, often perpetrated in cooperation with successive US administrations, which supplied his regime with weapons and intelligence.

Bush/Blair War Crimes

There can be no double standards in assessing war crimes. Hanging should also be the sentence for Bush and Blair, for:

1. causing the death of almost 700 thousands mostly civilian Iraqis during the last three years of US occupation, the destruction of all Iraqi civilian infrastructures,

2. the collapse of all civilian services,

3. triggering the departure into several hundred thousand Iraqis, fleeing Iraq and becoming refugees in foreign countries,

4. the bombings of various religious shrines,

5. the tearing of the Iraqi social fabric and the incitment of civil war,

6. the theft of Iraqi's oil national resources,

7. the looting of cultural treasures,

8. the massacre of civilians including women and children,

9. the use of illegal weapons, such as depleted uranium and phosphorus bombs, against whole cities and the burying thousands of victims in massive graveyards,

10. the nightly raids against civilian homes and the kidnapping of people including women and children,

11. the spreading of terror, insecurity and chaos within cities,

12. the imprisonment of thousands of innocent people in massive encampments, torturing, humiliating, raping, and murdering of innocent civilian prisoners, and many other war crimes.

The invasion of Iraq, in itself, is a war crime. The invasion was based on lies and fabrications; Iraq did not have WMD, did not support terrorists, and did not pose any threat to its neighboring countries or to the Western world as claimed by the US administration.

"Freeing Iraqis" and "spreading American democracy" were the underlying falsehoods used to justify a terrorist war against Iraq. and its population. The UN Secretary Kofi Annan, in his resignation speech, called the war on Iraq an "illegal act that contravened the UN charter", thus making the war a supreme international crime. Annan also declared that Iraq under the rule of dictator Saddam was much better off than under the American democracy.

Bush and Blair. waged an illegal war, with a view to steeling Iraqis natural resources including its extensive oil reserves. They, and their administrations, caused the deaths of almost a million people within a period of three years.

They had caused the destruction of a whole country. They spread terror not only in Iraq but in the entire Middle Eastern region. They legalized torture, rape, and murder of prisoners.

They kidnapped citizens of other nations and sent them to be tortured in prisons scattered around the world.

They not only terrorized and caused the deaths of citizens of other nations, they also terrorized their own citizens,

They derogated their human and civil rights through imposing draconian laws such as the Patriot Act,

They legalized surveillance and ethnic profiling, the imprisoned their own citizens, based on ethnic on religious background labeling them "foreign combatants', trying them with undisclosed evidence, terrorizing their citizens with imaginary enemies.

They sent their young men and women to fight an illegal war in iraq and Afghanistan..

They dramatically curtailed all types of social services, while channelling tax dollars to the military industrial complex.

Billions of dollars from the public purse, financed by tax payers, allegedly designated to financing "postwar reconstruction" and "spreading American democracy", were channelled into the bank accounts of large corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel.

Saddam Hussein was hanged on the orders of a US sponsored Kangaroo court. Who has the authority to hang Bush, Blair and company for their crimes?

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer of Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala. Currently he lives in the US.

The lynching was also an insult to all Muslims, as it occurred on the Holy Day of Eid, whereby Muslims devote themselves to prayer and forgiveness. It is all too clear that the war criminal Bush has no sensitivities whatsoever for Muslims on their pilgrimage to Mecca. This barbaric act is a sacrilege!

The entire trial process was a mockery of justice, no less a Kangaroo Court. Defence counsels were brutally murdered, witnesses threatened and judges removed for being impartial and replaced by puppet judges. Yet, we are told that Iraq was invaded to promote democracy, freedom and justice.

A peaceful country has now been turned into a war zone. Over 500,000 children died as a result of the criminal economic sanctions, and the latest findings by the medical journal, Lancet reveals that over 650,000 Iraqis have died since the illegal invasion of 2003.

The War Criminal Bush has killed more Iraqis than President Saddam ever did, if in fact he was guilty of any crime. If President Saddam Hussein is guilty of war crimes, then the world must find Bush, Blair and Howard equally guilty and the International Criminal Court cannot but prosecute these war criminals. The inaction thus far by the International Criminal Court against Bush, Blair and Howard exposes the double standard of the said Court, when it does not hesitate to prosecute war crimes committed in Dalfur, Rwanda and Kosovo.

If we support human rights and justice, we must condemn this barbaric lynching of President Saddam Hussein. There can be no excuse whatsoever for this injustice under any circumstances. War Criminal Bush and the puppet regime in Iraq have made a mockery of the Rule of Law.

From the beginning, the war in Iraq lacked one fundamental precept: legality. From the beginning, the kangaroo court hurriedly set up to try Saddam Hussein and other members of the Ba'athist Party lacked one fundamental precept: legality, as expressed by numerous international experts.

From the very beginning, the foreign policy launched by the Bush regime (the lies of Colin Powell at the UNO, the lies of George Bush, who knew not only that Iraq had WMD but even knew exactly where they were, the shock and awe campaign which was no more than a criminal act of butchery) proved to be wholly out of tune with the rest of Humankind, a sort of Hitlerian spasm which humanity appears to suffer from every so many years.

The criminal act of invading a sovereign nation outside the UN auspices, of targeting civilian structures with military hardware, of removing a State so irresponsibly, has sent Iraqi society back three centuries in three years. Women, for instance, have lost any rights they gained under Saddam, and now are unable to venture out without a veil and religion is no longer a private matter, but a cause to be killed for, while the Kurds fight to keep Saria law out of their constitution. This is the Iraq of George Bush.

Sectarian violence is rife and increasing and civilian casualties are reaching shocking proportions of tens of thousands a year. So what did the Bush regime wish to achieve with the murder of Saddam Hussein?

Does George Bush believe that two wrongs make a right? He should know, after all Saddam Hussein was hanged for signing 148 death warrants for high treason, while George Bush signed 152 as Governor of Texas, for lesser crimes.

With the Sunni community deploring this wanton act of cruelty and the Shiite community celebrating, how much nearer to open civil war does the Bush regime wish to push Iraq?

The hurried way in which Saddam Hussein was dispatched raises the suspicion that there was something to hide. After all, why were we not shown the footage of the trial? Why did 99 per cent of the proceedings take place in secrecy? What did Saddam Hussein say in his defence? Who sold him the weapons? Who sold him the gas? Upon whose orders? Did Iraq gas the Kurds or was it some other neighbouring state with a Kurdish question to solve at a moment when it would be easy to blame someone else?

These are questions to which we will never know the answer because the Government of the United States of America was unable or unwilling to face the truth. The murder of Saddam Hussein was therefore a criminal act of cowardice which created a martyr out of a man who could easily have been portrayed as a monster and which underlines the criminal, murderous traits of George Bush the man and the Presidency of the USA today. The monster, after all, sits in the Oval Office, Washington, the scene of many lurid acts in recent years.

A total of 128 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Although 69 other countries retain the death penalty, the number of countries that actually execute prisoners in any year is much smaller.

Saddam's Iraq was notorious for arbitrary killings. He used torture, murders, targeted assassinations, and court-ordered executions to maintain an iron grip. One respected human rights organisation reported how he ordered public beheadings of women accused of being prostitutes. Their heads were publicly displayed near signs reading, "For the honour of Iraq".

His execution has come at a time when the death penalty is under more pressure than it has been for years. No less a figure than Governor Jeb Bush of Florida - whose brother, President George Bush, is a noted supporter of capital punishment - has just ordered a moratorium on executions in the state after a botched lethal injection in which the prisoner took twice as long as usual to die and is believed to have been in agony.

Executions have been suspended in California and Missouri after judges ruled lethal injection unconstitutional because the pain it causes amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

And a special commission in New Jersey yesterday recommended that the state become the first to abolish the death penalty since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

In the United States, new medical research that suggests lethal injection, the execution method in all but one state, is an extremely painful way to die, has reopened the debate.

Around the world, capital punishment is losing ground. In 2005, Mexico and Liberia became the latest countries to abolish the death penalty, bringing the number of countries that have no death penalty to 86; in 1977 there were 16.

Although thousands are still executed every year, just four countries account for 94 per cent of all executions: China, the US, Iran and Saudi Arabia. China accounts for most executions, sentencing people to death not only for murder, but for crimes including tax fraud, minor drug offences and non-violent theft. It has dropped its practice of forcing the relatives of the executed to pay for the bullet with which they are killed.

In Iran and Saudi Arabia, executions are still public. Criminals are beheaded with the sword in Saudi Arabia, and hanged from cranes in Iran, where children under the age of 18 are still executed.

Other countries that still commit significant numbers of executions include Vietnam, where information on how many death sentences have been carried out is classified as a state secret, and Pakistan. Now Amnesty International is warning of growing concern over the number of people being executed in Iraq.

Saddam executed thousands of Iraqis during his time in power. But in the end, the video of his own brutal execution may be two and a half minutes that reopened the debate on capital punishment.

Capital punishment across the world

53 The number of executions in the United States in 2006

10 The number of states which have put executions on hold after the botched execution of Angel Nieves Diaz in Florida last month. He took 34 minutes to die from a lethal injection

31 The number of years that one US citizen has been on death row. The Texan prisoner is scheduled to be executed this year for murder

68 The number of crimes carrying the death penalty in China. They include non-violent crimes such as tax fraud, embezzlement and drugs offences

86 The number of prisoners executed in Saudi Arabia last year - almost half of whom were foreign nationals

4 The number of people executed in Japan on Christmas Day

94 The percentage of all known executions which took place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US

6 The number of methods of execution: beheading (in Saudi Arabia, Iraq); electrocution (US); hanging (Egypt, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, Singapore and others); lethal injection (China, Guatemala, Philippines, Thailand, US); shooting (Belarus, China, Somalia, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and others) and stoning (Iran and Afghanistan)

18 The minimum age for the application of the death penalty according to international treaty

8 The number of child offenders executed in Iran in 2005

2,148 The total number of people executed in 2005, in 22 countries

Iraqi state television aired an official video of the hanging, which had no audio and never showed Saddam's actual death. But the mobile phone video showed the deposed leader being taunted in his final moments, with witnesses shouting "go to hell" before he dropped through the gallows floor and swung dead at the end of a rope.

The unruly scene aired on Al-Jazeera television and was posted on the internet, prompting a worldwide outcry and big protests among Iraq's minority Sunnis, who lost their preferential status when Saddam was ousted in the US-led invasion of March 2003.

Al-Maliki yesterday ordered his Interior Ministry to investigate the video - who made it and how it reached television and websites for public viewing.

Today, an Iraqi prosecutor who was also present at the execution denied a report that he had accused the country's national security adviser of possible responsibility for the leaked video.

"I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie (the national security adviser), and I did not see him taking pictures," Munqith al-Faroon, an Iraqi prosecutor in the case that sent Saddam to the gallows, told The Associated Press.

"But I saw two of the government officials who were ... present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution. They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces," al-Faroon said in a telephone interview.

The prosecutor said the two officials were openly taking video pictures, which are believed to be those which appeared on Al-Jazeera satellite television and a website within hours of Saddam's death by hanging shortly before dawn on Saturday.

The New York Times today reported that al-Faroon told the newspaper " one of two men he had seen holding a mobile phone camera aloft to make a video of Mr Hussein's last moments up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki's national security adviser."

The Times said it had been unable to reach al-Rubaie for comment. AP also could not reach him today.

Al-Faroon said there were 14 Iraqi officials, including himself and another prosecutor, as well as three hangmen present for the execution. All the officials, he said, were flown by US helicopter to the former military intelligence facility where Saddam was put to death in an execution chamber used by his own security men for years.

The prosecutor said he believed all mobile phones had been confiscated before the flight and that some of the officials' bodyguards, who arrived by car, had smuggled the camera phones to the two officials he had seen taking the video pictures.

Some of the last words Saddam heard, according to the leaked mobile phone video, were a chant of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada," a reference to Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American Shiite cleric, whose Mahdi Army militia is believed responsible for many of this year's wave of killings that have targeted Sunnis and driven many from their homes.

Al-Sadr's father was killed by Saddam. The militant cleric is a key al-Maliki backer.

As the White House said President George W. Bush had not seen the video, Major General William Caldwell urged the Iraqi government to reach out to disillusioned Sunni Arabs, who have warned that the execution and film are blows to the Shi'ite-led government's efforts at national reconciliation.

Caldwell said U.S. forces, who had physical custody of Saddam for three years, left all security measures at Saddam's hanging, including access to the execution chamber, to Iraqis.

"Had we been physically in charge at that point we would have done things differently," Caldwell told a news conference.

"At this point the government of Iraq has the opportunity to take advantage of what has occurred and really reach out now in an attempt to bring more people back into the political process and bring the Sunnis back," he said, singling out a need to ease restrictions on former members of Saddam's Baath party.

"It's a real critical juncture."

In unusually direct advice from the U.S. military to Iraqi leaders, Caldwell said the country's government and parliament "will have to rise above past divisions".

"This will entail difficult decisions ... and hard compromises necessary for national reconciliation."

VIDEO STIRS ANGER

Caldwell said there had been a lull in violence over the Eid al-Adha holiday which started on Saturday, but U.S. forces were braced for a possible violent backlash still to come.

Thousands of Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs have marched to vent anger at the execution in Sunni Arab strongholds. More mourners came to visit his grave in his home village of Awja on Wednesday, and other towns also saw further demonstrations.

In Falluja, in western Iraq, posters were plastered on walls promising revenge for the "martyr" Saddam.

The unofficial video of the hanging, apparently filmed on a mobile phone, showed Shi'ite officials mocking Saddam just before he was hanged, inflaming sectarian passions in a country already on the brink of sectarian civil war.

Rubaie blamed the video on people trying to raise tension.

"Whoever leaked this video meant to harm national reconciliation and drive a wedge between Shi'ites and Sunnis," said Rubaie, one of some 20 official witnesses at the hanging.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to the prime minister, told Iraqiya state television that a number of guards at the facility had been taken in for questioning and investigators had identified a person suspected of filming the hanging.

Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, heard appealing for order on the video, told Reuters on Tuesday that two senior officials had filmed the hanging, challenging government claims guards did it.

TIMING

The timing of the execution, just four days after an appeal failed and on the first day of Eid, shocked many, both in Iraq and in the rest of the Muslim world.

A senior U.S. official told the New York Times Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was concerned that if Saddam was not hanged quickly he would somehow escape the noose.

"His concern was security, and that ... maybe there would be a mass kidnapping to bargain for Saddam Hussein's release," he said. "He was concerned that he might somehow get free."

Rubaie confirmed that Iraqi officials had been concerned Saddam might escape justice: "The question is not 'Why the rush in the execution?' The question is 'Why the delay?'

"Some people were talking about the Americans, saying they might take him to one of these islands controlled by the United States and exile him there."

Rubaie, Faroon and Sami al-Askari, a senior aide to Maliki, all said the date had not been set for the hanging of Barzan al -Tikriti, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bander, a former chief judge, despite other officials telling media they would hang on Thursday at dawn.

Before Saddam's hanging, there were similarly conflicting reports about when it would happen and the government took the final decision only a few hours before the dawn execution.

When he returns from his holiday in Miami, Mr Blair will come under pressure to condemn the way Saddam was executed last Saturday. He has so far avoided any public comment.

Yesterday George Bush ­ who said he had not seen the illicit video of the hanging because he was focused on the "way forward" in Iraq ­ dodged questions about the execution as the Americans sought to distance themselves from the way it was handled. Major General William Caldwell said in Baghdad that the US would have carried it out "differently" and did not play a role in the proceedings. "If you're asking me, would we have done things differently, yes, we would have," he said. "But that's not our decision. That's a government of Iraq decision."

He said a US military team only transported Saddam to the site of his execution, and the Iraqi government maintained custody of the former leader throughout. After delivering Saddam to the Iraqi Ministry of Justice's As-Buratha prison, American personnel "withdrew from the building, back from the whole location", he added.

In Britain, MPs believe the controversy risks turning Saddam into a martyr. His execution is sensitive for Mr Blair because the Government opposes the death penalty. Downing Street declined to say whether Britain would back Italian calls for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment via the United Nations but reaffirmed the Government's opposition to it.

The spokeswoman said: "The Iraqi government is going to conduct an inquiry into the manner in which the execution was conducted. We fully support that decision and believe it is the right thing to do. As they have said, there were obviously things that went wrong."

She insisted that Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, had spoken on behalf of the whole Government by saying the UK was against the death penalty but that Saddam had been "held to account".

No 10 backed Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, who said in an interview that he would not seek a second term and wished he could leave office before his four-year term is up and would not run again. "I didn't want to take this position," Mr Maliki told the Wall Street Journal. "I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again."

Amnesty International warned that Saddam's execution was just one of a fast-rising number in Iraq, claiming at least 54 were carried out last year. Tim Hancock, its UK campaigns director, said: "Iraq had a chance to turn its back on the cruelty of the Saddam years and respect human rights, pursuing real justice with fair trials and humane punishment of those found guilty."

Iraqi authorities have not yet set a date to hang Saddam Hussein's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, and a former judge, Awad al-Bander, convicted with him for crimes against humanity.

"Why is it necessary to hang (him) just at the time when people are saying the holiday prayers?"

Mr Mubarak, who was interviewed at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheik ahead of a meeting there with the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who also condemned the manner in which Saddam was put to death.

Footage shot on a mobile phone camera, which appeared on television and websites just hours after Saddam was hanged on Saturday, showed him facing sectarian taunts from hooded guards before he was placed in the noose.

Mr Mubarak labelled the video footage of Saddam's death as "shocking pictures, primitive pictures," adding, "It was disgraceful and very painful".

"I'm not going to say whether Saddam deserved the death penalty or not," Mr Mubarak said. "I'm also not going to go into the question of whether that court is legal under the occupation.? "When all's said and done, nobody will ever forget the circumstances and the manner in which Saddam was executed. They have made him into a martyr, while the problems within Iraq remain."

Egypt is a key US ally in the Middle East, and has signed a peace deal with Israel. However, it also had friendly relations with Saddam's regime before his invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The manner of Saddam's execution has been condemned around the world, with Mr Bush admitting he "wished proceedings had gone in a more dignified way".

Tony Blair, who was on holiday when Saddam was hanged, has yet to comment. His deputy, John Prescott, labelled the way it was carried out as "deplorable".

The US propaganda machine got it all wrong once again. Thinking that the Saddam hanging would make the world celebrate the New Year with greater frenzies, the US has in fact divided the world into pro-US and anti-US.

While Malaysia, Indonesia and the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) showed their real fear of the US by 'accepting' the hanging, other nations did not fail to point the wrong timing, the bad video and the sectarian taunting during Saddam's last moments alive.

Editors in Mauritius (see world futures for the article on Saddam City) the tiny Indian Ocean Island called the hanging an unfortunate event that made Saddam a martyr despite his wrongdoings. The day of Eid el Adha, chosen for the killing of Saddam by the Shiite majority government in Iraq, will only turn Saddam into a household hero in Iraq's Sunni homes wrote other editors in the Middle East.

The Arab streets are boiling with anti-US sentiments while in Palestine there has been extensive mourning for the fallen leader who is now considered a martyr. A Muslim is said to be a martyr if he is killed by his foes. Many Palestinians believe the fact that Saddam is heard reciting the act of Islamic faith and died while calling the name of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) makes him a martyr.

In Hyderabad, President Saddam Hussein's execution by the Iraq government on Saturday 30th December 2006 was received with shock.

Political parties, including left-wing parties and Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, took out rallies and burnt effigies of US President George W Bush, while religious institutions condemned the execution.

MIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi said, "The trial was a farce. The US showed its total insensitivity by executing Saddam Hussein on a holy day. These days are holy for the Muslims. They are busy in prayers and celebrating Id."

Hundreds of left activists took out a rally from L B Stadium to Basheerbagh crossroads and later burnt Bush's effigy. They also raised slogans against the US government.

"Saddam's hanging is hanging of justice," they shouted. CPM activists took out a black flag rally from Golconda crossroads to Musheerabad crossroads and later burnt the effigy of the US president. TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu termed the execution of Saddam as an 'unfortunate' event.

"The execution will have far-reaching consequences on the law and order situation internationally," Naidu said in a press release.

Religious bodies Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Jamiatul Ulama (JU) were more vocal in their reaction. JI president for AP and Orissa Abdul Basith Anwar, in a statement, expressed regret and said the execution was carried out when Muslims were preparing for Fajar (morning) prayer.

"If execution is the punishment for Saddam Hussein for what he had done to his people and the country, then President Bush and his ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair deserve worse treatment for what they are doing in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq," he added.

JU state president Hafiz Peer Shabbir Ahmed described the US as the biggest terrorist on the face of earth. The hanging of Saddam will have dangerous repercussions. The US should realise this, he warned.

However, Shia Personal Board general secretary Maulana Raza Agha said Saddam Hussein was the biggest tyrant and Muslims should learn a lesson in his execution

India dissapointed

Describing the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as 'unfortunate', India on Saturday said it was 'disappointed' over the development.

New Delhi, which had earlier opposed Hussein's execution, hoped that the event will not affect the process of reconciliation and restoration of peace in the trouble-torn country.

"We had already expressed the hope that the execution would not be carried out. We are disappointed that it has been (carried out)," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in a statement.

U.N. approves of Saddam's killing

The United Nations, through its new Secretary General failed to condemn the hanging of Saddam. New U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ran into trouble on his first day of work Tuesday over Saddam Hussein's execution when he failed to state the United Nations' opposition to the death penalty and said capital punishment should be a decision of individual countries.

In a blunt and shocking statement, Ban Ki-moon showed his intolerance and possibly the new image of the SG of the UN by stating it was alright to hang Saddam.

On their part, Malaysia and Indonesia approved of the hanging despite the general feeling among Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims that it was wrong to do so. The two South East Asian Muslim majority nations have de-facto approved of the US illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 with this tacit approval of Saddam's killing.

Perhaps Mahathir Mohamad, former Premier of Malaysia, voiced what most Muslims in the world are feeling when he said Saddam's hanging was a lynching and that George W. Bush and Tony Blair were criminals.

In the UK, the Independent Newspaper criticized the hanging of Saddam saying it made the 'monster a martyr' and it will fuel wider sectarian violence in Iraq.

Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, had appealed to Iraq not to execute the two men, Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's revolutionary court.

They were convicted and sentenced to death along with Saddam for the killings of 148 Shia from Dujail in the 1980s.

Their executions were initially postponed until after the Eid al-Adha holiday. Although Wednesday was the last day of the holiday for Iraq's Shia community the government has declared a public holiday lasting until Saturday.

Bahaa al-Araji, an MP for the radical Shia group headed by Moqtada al-Sadr, said he believed the likely execution date was Sunday.

Following the rowdy scenes at Saddam's hanging, the US called yesterday for due diligence in the forthcoming executions. "We expect Iraqi officials to handle their business with appropriate care," White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters.

According to Mr Askari, investigators have identified two guards as having illicitly filmed Saddam's execution using mobile phones. However, a prosecutor who attended the execution told Reuters he had seen two officials filming the hanging, prompting suggestions that the guards might be used as scapegoats.

The "humiliating" manner in which the execution was carried out clearly violated human rights law, said Philip Alston, an independent expert with the UN Human Rights Council. He described the legal proceedings as a "tragically missed opportunities to demonstrate that justice can be done, even in the case of one of the greatest crooks of our time."

Someone has to say it: The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush's claim it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy."

Instead, the rushed, illegal and unruly execution of a former U.S. ally after his conviction in a kangaroo court blurred the line between terrorist and terrorized as effectively as Saddam's own evil propaganda ever did.

In the most generous interpretation, the frantic killing of Saddam abetted by the United States was the third act in a morality play of misplaced vengeance for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- in which the first act was the invasion of Iraq, based on trumped-up lies linking it to al-Qaida, and the second was the killing of the tyrant's sons, whose bloody corpses were hypocritically displayed to the world like war scalps.

At worst, the handling of Saddam is just another example of an Imperial America under President Bush that recognizes no boundaries of national sovereignty or any restraint of international law. A nation that posed no threat to U.S. security was conquered for a range of base motives, from oil plunder to industrial profits to naked political gain. Of course, these are the same rationales that despots always use to explain their murderous wars, such as Saddam's genocidal invasion of Iran and greedy occupation of Kuwait.

The president says the execution was warranted because Saddam received a fair trial even after Bush decided to bypass an international tribunal designed to handle such trials of national rulers and instead turn Saddam over to Iraq's dominant partisan faction in the midst of a nascent civil war. While Saddam's guilt of "crimes against humanity" may have been accurate, it was not, in fact, established by his trial, which was pushed through even as his lawyers were being assassinated. This, quite opposite to the spirit of the Nuremberg war crime trials (established by the United States but not repeated today by President Bush), where the accused had competent and unintimidated attorneys, free to make a complete case.

The trial dealt only with alleged crimes that occurred in the Shiite village of Dujail after an assassination attempt on Saddam. His bloody reprisals occurred 15 months before Donald Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's emissary, traveled to Baghdad to initiate an alliance with Saddam. Rumsfeld conceded in classified memos that he was familiar with Saddam's unsavory past, yet advocated forming an alliance with the dictator.

In fact, the most heinous crimes allegedly committed by Saddam, including the use of poison gas against Shiite Iraqis he suspected of being sympathetic to his Shiite enemies in Iran, were carried out during the years that he was our ally. With the United States having now put Iraqi Shiites with long political, military and ideological ties to those same Iranian ayatollahs into power in Baghdad, the bizarre circle of this foreign policy disaster is now complete, with Saddam's broken neck a fitting coda.

The video images now broadcast widely on the Internet show, as The New York Times reported, that the execution proceedings deteriorated "into a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect . . . of making [Saddam] appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shiites, who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs." As the executioners chanted "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!," in reference to death squad leader Moqtada al Sadr, Saddam may have claimed for his Sunni followers an undeserved martyrdom.

"Is that how real men behave?" Saddam asked, smiling contemptuously. In the end, Sadr was presented figuratively with the head of Saddam by reluctant U.S. officials -- the former dictator was in U.S. custody, after all -- in order to placate the Shiite radicals running Iraq, even though Iraqi law bans executions on this past weekend's religious holiday and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani refused to sign a decree upholding the death sentence, as is required by the country's new constitution.

Fittingly, U.S. officials appeared in this spectacle as hapless Keystone Kops, morally implicated by their tepid support of a lynch mob. It perfectly mirrors decades of U.S. meddling in the history of Iraq, beginning with U.S. support for Saddam's Baath Party when it overthrew Iraqi nationalist Abdul Karim Qassem because we feared he was tilting ever so slightly to the Soviets. In fact, Saddam, like Osama bin Laden and the other Islamist fanatics our CIA recruited and helped to wage holy war against the Soviets, was a monster at least partially of our creation.

Those deeply unsavory connections between Saddam and the United States would have been exposed in any honest trial. Presumably, this is the real reason why the Bush administration so assiduously undermined any equitable judicial accounting of Saddam's criminality, right through his shamefully and illegally rushed execution.

Robert Scheer is the co-author of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq. See more of Robert Scheer at TruthDig.

During his trial, Saddam himself was clearly trying to position himself to be a martyr in the cause of Iraqi independence and unity and Arab nationalism. His manifest failure to do anything effective for these causes during the quarter of a century he misruled Iraq should have made his task difficult. But an execution which vied in barbarity with a sectarian lynching in the backstreets of Belfast 30 years ago is elevating him to heroic status in the eyes of the Sunni - the community to which most Arabs belong - across the Middle East.

The old nostrum of Winston Churchill that "grass may grow on the battlefield but never under the gallows" is likely to prove as true in Iraq as it has done so frequently in the rest of the world. Nor is the US likely to be successful in claiming that the execution was purely an Iraqi affair.

Many Iraqis recall that the announcement of the verdict on Saddam sentencing him to death was conveniently switched last year to 5 November, the last daily news cycle before the US mid-term elections. The US largely orchestrated the trial from behind the scenes. Yesterday the Iraqi government arrested an official who supervised the execution for making the mobile-phone video that has stirred so much controversy.

The Iraqi Shia and Kurds are overwhelmingly delighted that Saddam is in his grave. But the timing of his death at the start of the Eid al-Adha feast makes his killing appear like a deliberate affront to the Sunni community. The execution of his half-brother Barzan in the next few days will confirm it in its sense that it is the target of an assault by the majority Shia.

Why was the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki so keen to kill Saddam Hussein? First, there is the entirely understandable desire for revenge. Members of the old opposition to Saddam Hussein are often blamed for their past ineffectiveness but most lost family members to his torture chambers and execution squads. Every family in Iraq lost a member to his disastrous wars or his savage repressions.

There is also a fear among Shia leaders that the US might suddenly change sides. This is not as outlandish as it might at first appear. The US has been cultivating the Sunni in Iraq for the past 18 months. It has sought talks with the insurgents. It has tried to reverse the de-Baathification campaign. US commentators and politicians blithely talk about eliminating the anti-American Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and fighting his militia, the Mehdi Army. No wonder Shias feel that it is better to get Saddam under the ground just as quickly as possible. Americans may have forgotten that they were once allied to him but Iraqis have not.

When Saddam fell Iraqis expected life to get better. They hoped to live like Saudis and Kuwaitis. They knew he had ruined his country by hot and cold wars. When he came to power as president in 1979, Iraq had large oil revenues, vast oil reserves, a well-educated people and a competent administration. By invading Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, he reduced his nation to poverty. This was made worse by the economic siege imposed by 13 years of UN sanctions.

But life did not get better after 2003. Face-to-face interviews with 2,000 Iraqi adults by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies in November revealed that 90 per cent of them said the situation in their country had been better before the US-led invasion. Only 5 per cent of people said it was better today. The survey was carried out in Baghdad, in the wholly Sunni Anbar province and the entirely Shia Najaf province. It does not include the Kurds, who remain favourable to the occupation.

This does not mean that Iraqis want Saddam back. But it is clearly true that the chances of dying violently in Iraq are far greater today everywhere in the country outside the three Kurdish provinces than they were in 2002. The myth put about by Republican neoconservatives that large parts of Iraq enjoyed pastoral calm post-war but were ignored by the liberal media was always a fiction. None of the neocons who claim that the good news from Iraq was being suppressed ever made any effort to visit those Iraqi provinces which they claimed were at peace.

Saddam should not have been a hard act to follow. It was not inevitable that the country should revert to Hobbesian anarchy. At first the US and Britain did not care what Iraqis thought. Their victory over the Iraqi army - and earlier over the Taliban in Afghanistan - had been too easy. They installed a semi-colonial regime. By the time they realised that the guerrilla war was serious it was too late.

It could get worse yet. The so-called "surge" in US troop levels by 20,000 to 30,000 men on top of the 145,000 soldiers already in the country is unlikely to produce many dividends. It seems primarily designed so that President George Bush does not have to admit defeat or take hard choices about talking to Iran and Syria. But these reinforcements might tempt the US to assault the Mehdi Army.

Somehow many senior US officials have convinced themselves that it is Mr Sadr, revered by millions of Shia, who is the obstacle to a moderate Iraqi government. In fact his legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Shia Iraqis, the great majority of the population, is far greater than the "moderate" politicians whom the US has in its pocket and who seldom venture out of the Green Zone. Mr Sadr is a supporter of Mr Maliki, whose relations with Washington are ambivalent.

An attack on the Shia militia men of the Mehdi Army could finally lead to the collapse of Iraq into total anarchy. Saddam must already be laughing in his grave.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, which is published by Verso

'I felt quite sickened, appalled and disgusted'

A S Byatt

Booker Prize-winning author

The only absolute moral value I have is that the death penalty is wrong. And I think that it's wrong not because of the sanctity of the life of the dead person but because of the evil it does to the executioners. Of course it has now turned Saddam into a kind of martyr because people have now started to imagine what was actually done to him. The death penalty produces a kind of horror in me that not even paedophilia can. I think it is the absolute evil thing that humans do.

Sir Crispin Tickell

Former British ambassador to the United Nations and permanent representative to the Security Council

I thought the way the execution was carried out was quite disgraceful. But then the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath has, as we know, been a disaster. Everything that I feared has, sadly, come true. I am against the death penalty and thus I was against this execution. Having said that, this one death, in the context of all the others in Iraq, probably will not have such a huge impact on the long term.

Louise Christian

Solicitor for former Guantanamo Bay detainees

I felt quite sickened, appalled and disgusted by what we saw. I hate everything that Saddam Hussein stood for and wanted him brought to justice. This [his death] is the worst kind of outcome.I think the prosecutor should have stopped it. It sends the message that it is revenge by the Shias and not impartial justice. I would support an international moratorium on the death penalty but we need all international leaders to sign up to it.

Nitin Sawhney

Musician

The killing was barbaric. I find it strangely coincidental that it happened at Eid - a time when Muslims are trying to celebrate. Instead, a brown-skinned man with a noose around their neck dominated the front page of every newspaper. George Bush, himself a historically prolific perpetrator of capital punishment, described the execution as "a milestone"; which is equally as abhorrent. I wonder what

message this action of internationally condoned murder sends out to children across the world during Christmas, Eid and the New Year. The situation is so extreme: I feel incredibly angry - and emotional - about so many things around it.

Ann Widdecombe

Former Home Office minister

I have no problem with the decision to execute Saddam, but I have an enormous problem with the way it was made into a public spectacle. I didn't see the slightest justification for the official pictures. I know the justification was that if they didn't take pictures, people may not believe the execution had happened, but there are 5,000 ways of getting around that. Things went from bad to worse with the informal footage. Yes, I voted for the death penalty in this country, particularly for police killers.

"It appears to be accidental," Claunch said. "Our gut reaction is that he was experimenting."

An autopsy of the fifth-grader's body was pending.

Julio Gustavo, Sergio's uncle, said the boy was a happy and curious child.

He said Sergio had watched TV news with another uncle on Saturday and asked the uncle about Saddam's death.

"His uncle told him it was because Saddam was real bad," Gustavo said. "He (Sergio) said, 'OK.' And that was it."

Sergio's mother, Sara Pelico DeLeon, was at work Sunday while Sergio and other children were under the care of an uncle, Gustavo said. One of the children found Sergio's body in his bedroom.

Police said the boy had tied a slipknot around his neck while on a bunk bed. Police investigators learned that Sergio had been upset about not getting a Christmas gift from his father, but they don't believe the boy intentionally killed himself.

Clinical psychologist Edward Bischof, of California, said children Sergio's age mimic risky behaviors they see on TV -- such as wrestling or extreme sports -- without realizing the dangers. He said TV appeared to be the stimulant in Sergio's case.

"I would think maybe this kid is trying something that he thinks fun to act out without having the emotional and psychological maturity to think the thing through before he acts on it," Bischof said.

Family members held a memorial for the boy Wednesday in the apartment complex activity center. Gustavo said the family is trying to put together enough money to send Sergio's body to Guatemala for burial.

"I don't think he thought it was real," Gustavo said of Saddam's hanging. "They showed them putting the noose around his neck and everything. Why show that on TV?"

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

He said his daughter, called Moon Moon, had become extremely depressed after watching Saddam's execution on television.

"She kept watching the scene over and again and didn't take food on Saturday and Sunday to protest the hanging," he said.

Police superintendent Pravin Kumar confirmed the suicide, saying the girl had strung herself up from a ceiling fan and was found dead early on Wednesday.

The communist-ruled state of West Bengal has condemned Saturday's execution of Saddam, with thousands of people taking to the streets.