Translated material
Revenge for Saddam
The execution of Saddam's half-brother, former intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti and former chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal Awad al-Bandar could further inflame the situation in Iraq. The Iraqi government stated that both death sentences were approved by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, “there is no turning back,” meaning the ex-Iraqi president’s associates could be hanged any day.
At-Tikriti and al-Bandara first wanted to be hanged at the same time as Saddam - on December 30, then the execution was postponed to January 4, but each time the convicts were returned back to their cells. Both said they “would consider it an honor to die with the President.”
Adviser to the Iraqi Prime Minister Maryam al-Rais called international calls for the abolition or postponement of executions “attempts to weaken national justice.” The sentencing of Saddam was welcomed only by the United States, Great Britain (where the execution, by the way, was abolished) and Iran. The majority of the world community (UN, EU) fears that instead of national reconciliation, the Iraqis will now face a round of fratricidal conflict.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, “all those who sent their troops to Iraq and whose “coalition liberation mission” has now culminated in the reprisal of the odious former dictator must realize this.” After all, “they bear the entire burden of responsibility for what is happening in Iraq, including for the open violation of the very humanistic values that they readily teach to others.”
Russia's permanent representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said yesterday that Hussein's execution, "the way it was carried out, further aggravated the situation in Iraq" and "this aspect of the matter worries and should worry the UN Security Council." Saddam was hanged on the Muslim festival of sacrifice, at the military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone. The ex-president, with a noose around his neck, fell into an open hatch underneath him and died instantly as a result of a fracture of the cervical vertebrae - this is how they used to hang him in England. Many people were disgusted by two videos secretly made by the executioners and showing that they insulted their victim. Now these images are posted on the websites of the Ba'ath Party, which ruled under Saddam and is banned in today's Iraq. There, its former leader is called an “immortal martyr.”
“Bush timed Hussein’s execution to coincide with the opening of the congressional session in order to show the winning democrats who is boss in Iraq,” Professor Anatoly Yegorin, head of the Russian-Arab Dialogue scientific center at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Vremya Novostei. “But two hasty steps could cost Bush his career.” The first is the seizure of Iraq under the false pretexts of Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction and his involvement in international terrorism. The second is a medieval reprisal against the ex-president, leading only to intensification of the Sunni-Shiite confrontation and new American losses.” Saddam was convicted of killing 148 Shiites in 1982 in the village of Dujail, whose residents fired on his motorcade.