'Thousands' Converge on Tikrit for Saddam's Burial

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'Thousands' Converge on Tikrit for Saddam's Burial

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

[Despite all the confusing tales that were spun about cremation, a secret
burial, or the Iraqi "government" holding onto the body for some
indeterminant time, it appears that Saddam's casket (or so they say) was
buried near his hometown less than 24 hours after his death, as decreed by
religious custom. According to the press, thousands of Iraqis converged on
Tikrit, despite the area supposedly being locked down, although not many may
have been permitted near the burial. Who knows. Three articles follow.

The third item is an updated version of Burns's story from last night. Burns
seems to be talking only to Shiites. Hard-line radical Sunnis who are part
of the active Iraqi Resistance who were interviewed by another reporter
indicated no great sense of loss either, and one said the religious
resistance would now be able to progress more smoothly without the static of
Saddam Hussein's fate.

Saddam was not religious and was seen as an enemy by orthodox religious
Iraqis of all stripes, Wahabi Sunnis and al-Qaeda-connected extremists,
which is why the USA's original lies that he had anything to do with al
Qaeda were patently absurd on their face, had anyone in the mainstream US
press bothered to even look superficially into them. Osama bin Laden
routinely condemned Saddam Hussein, something left out of the mainstream
Western myth.

The Times has numerous photos of the mourners at the casket, etc.-NY Transfer]

The Business Standard - Dec 31, 2006
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=11&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=19109

Iraqis attend Saddam's burial

Our Bureau / Baghdad December 31, 2006--Thousands of Iraqis trooped to
former dictator Saddam Hussein's hometown of Ouja in Iraq on Sunday to
witness his burial in a religious compound 24 hours after he was executed.

Relatives and other mourners attended the interment Sunday morning near
Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. Some were seen crying and moaning while
other knelt before his flag-draped grave. A huge photograph of Saddam was
propped up on a chair near the casket.

Salam Hassan al-Nasseri, 45 and one of Saddam's clansmen said, "I condemn
the way he was executed and I consider it a crime."

Mohammed Natiq, a 24-year-old college student, added, "The path of Arab
nationalism must inevitably be paved with blood. God has decided that Saddam
Hussein should have such an end, but his march and the course which he
followed will not end."

Iraqi security forces on Saturday blocked the entrance to Tikrit and
prevented people from entering or leaving the city for four days. Despite
the tight security, gunmen were seen taking to the streets and shooting into
the air while vowing revenge.

Saddam was captured by U.S. troops in an underground hide-out near Ouja on
Dec. 13, 2003, which was eight months after he escaped Baghdad when the U.S.
invaded Iraq.

He was buried some two miles from the graves of his two sons, Udai and
Qusai, in the main town cemetery. The sons and a grandson were killed during
a firefight with U.S. troops in Mosul in July 2003.

(Courtesy: Allheadlinenews.com)

***

The Australian - Jan 1, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20996384-601,00.html

Millions watch images of death

by Correspondents in Baghdad

SADDAM Hussein was buried before dawn yesterday in his native village of
Awjah, near Tikrit in northern Iraq, less than 24 hours after the former
president was hanged for crimes against humanity.

"Saddam Hussein has been buried today at 4am (12pm AEST) in a place that was
constructed during his regime in the centre of Awjah," said Musa Faraj, one
of Saddam's relatives from the area. He said the building where Saddam was
buried was a hall usually used for condolence meetings in Awjah, 180km north
of Baghdad.

Ali al-Nida, head of the Albu Nasir tribe, said few people were able to
attend the burial because security forces had sealed off Tikrit, the
stronghold of Saddam's supporters.

But millions of people around the world watched television images of the
body of the fallen dictator lying wrapped in a shroud, his neck twisted to
one side, after his dawn hanging.

Dramatic footage relayed from Iraq also showed the man labelled the "Butcher
of Baghdad" facing the final moments of his life - resigned to his fate as
executioners in balaclavas tightened a noose around his neck.

Yesterday a new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with
onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away.

"The tyrant has fallen," someone in the group of onlookers shouted. The
video, first broadcast by al-Jazeera satellite television, showed a close-up
of Saddam's face as he swung from the rope.

Officials denied on state television a statement read earlier that Saddam's
half-brother and a former judge were also hanged. One official said Barzan
al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bander, convicted with Saddam last month, would be
executed after the week-long Eid al-Adha holiday.

Saddam's execution, three decades after he established his personal rule by
force, has closed a chapter in Iraq's history marked by war with Iran and a
1990 invasion of Kuwait that turned him from ally to enemy of the US and
impoverished his oil-rich nation. But as US President George W. Bush said in
a statement yesterday, sectarian violence pushing Iraq towards civil war had
not ended.

"Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead," Mr Bush said in a
statement released last night from his Texas ranch.

"Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not
relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress.
Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it
is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can
govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

In Baghdad's Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City, victims of Saddam's autocratic
rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging
Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shia
neighbourhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shia regions of the
country.

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

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital,
loyalists marched with Saddam 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 Saddam in
Tikrit.

Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day
lockdown imposed after Saddam was sentenced to death on November 5.

The responses within Iraq to Saddam's death echoed the larger reaction
across the Middle East, with his enemies rejoicing and others proclaiming
him a martyr.

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.

Saddam's execution at the start of Eid is highly symbolic. The feast marks
the sacrifice the prophet Abraham was prepared to make when God ordered him
to kill his son and many Shi'ites could regard Saddam's death as a gift from
God. Such symbolism could further anger Sunnis, resentful of new Shia power.

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

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

At least 80 Iraqis died in bombings and other attacks on Saturday and police
said 12 more tortured bodies were found dumped in Baghdad. Six more
Americans were killed.

Agencies

***

The New York Times - Dec 31, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/world/middleeast/31iraq.html

Hussein Video Grips Iraq; Attacks Go On

By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Sunday, Dec. 31 ? After nearly three decades of living with the
brutal repression of Saddam Hussein and the violent aftermath of his
overthrow by American troops, Iraq responded with a mixture of rejoicing,
violence and muted reflection on Saturday to the news that their former
dictator had been hanged in one of the grimmest of his own execution
chambers.

This nation of 27 million people spent much of the day crowding around
television sets to watch mesmerizing replays of a videotape that showed the
69-year-old Mr. Hussein being led to the gallows at dawn by five masked
executioners, and having a noose fashioned from a thick rope of yellow hemp
lowered around his neck. In the final moments shown on the videotape, he
seemed almost unnaturally calm and cooperative.

The message seemed to be that he had lived his final moments with
unflinching dignity and courage, reinforcing the legend of himself as the
Arab world?s strongman that he cultivated while in power. But the videotape,
released by the government, offered only a partial sense of how Mr. Hussein
went to his death, according to accounts given later by some of the 25
people who attended the execution, including senior officials of the new
Shiite-led government.

In their telling, the ousted ruler, a Sunni, spent much of his last
half-hour, after arriving at the execution block at the Khadimiyah prison in
northern Baghdad, in querulous and at times irascible exchanges with the
Shiite guards and executioners assigned to hang him and with some of the
Shiite witnesses.

His bitter defiance, in the last moments of his life, was focused on his old
enemies: the United States, Iran and their ?spies,? a word commonly used at
the height of his tyranny to justify the merciless persecution of his
domestic opponents.

Early Sunday morning, an official in the governor?s office in Salahaddin,
Mr. Hussein?s home province, said the former leader had been buried in Awja,
near Tikrit, his hometown at 3:30 a.m. Also buried there are his two sons,
Uday and Qusay, who were killed when American troops stormed their hideout
in the northern city of Mosul in July 2003. But an Iraqi government official
said earlier that the body would be kept hidden for the time being.

The death sentence was to be carried out within 30 days of the rejection of
his appeal, but the hanging was completed by the end of the fifth day, which
took some officials in Washington by surprise and left some American legal
officials, who have worked with the Iraqi court, uncomfortable.

Within hours of the execution, at least 75 people were killed in nine
bombing attacks of the kind that Sunni insurgents commonly carry out against
Shiites. In the mainly Shiite districts of Hurriyah and Sayidah in Baghdad,
separate sequences in which car bombs detonated in close succession caused
at least 39 deaths. Two other car bombings hit Baghdad before nightfall, one
outside a children?s hospital in the Iskan neighborhood, and another that
killed two people outside a mosque in the mainly Sunni district of Adhamiya,
the Interior Ministry said.

Another vehicle bomb detonated in a popular fish market in the Shiite holy
town of Kufa, 100 miles south of Baghdad, killing 34 people and wounding 38
others, the ministry said. In the Kufa attack, an angry mob set on the
suspected bomber and beat him to death, the police said. Five more victims
died in a suicide bombing in the northern city of Tal Afar, another center
of violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

The United States military command announced six more combat deaths,
bringing the number of American troops killed in December to 109, the
deadliest month for American deaths since November 2004, according to
Reuters.

With bombing attacks a long-established feature of the struggle for power
across Iraq, it was impossible to say whether the Saturday bombings were
connected to the execution.

But statements by remnants of the ousted Baath Party, the political vehicle
Mr. Hussein rode to power, had promised retaliation, in the form of a new
wave of bombings, if the death sentence passed by an Iraqi court eight weeks
ago was carried out.

American military commanders took the threat seriously enough to put troops
in volatile areas on high alert. On Saturday, a statement on the party?s Web
site urged Iraqis to strike at the United States and Iran to avenge Mr.
Hussein, but cautioned that they must avoid full civil war, Agence
France-Presse reported.

From accounts given by witnesses, the hanging had strong sectarian
overtones. Within minutes of arriving at the execution block from the
American detention center near the airport, where he spent more than 1,000
days in solitary confinement, Mr. Hussein, who may have been the only Sunni
present, argued with the guards and executioners.

The men who guided him to the gallows were drawn from the country?s Shiite
south, identifiable by their darker skins and accents. The Shiites of
southern Iraq harbor a strong hatred for Mr. Hussein for his repression of
uprisings there, a repression that killed tens of thousands of Shiites.

The execution block scenes offered a grim echo of the sectarian struggle now
convulsing Iraq, as Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads engage in a
implacable cycle of revenge that has killed as many as 3,700 civilians a
month this year, and prompted many Iraqis to say that the killings ushered
in by the overthrow of Mr. Hussein are becoming as brutal, and numerous, as
anything he inflicted.

Even the decision to hasten Mr. Hussein to the gallows took on a sectarian
edge, as Iraq?s new Shiite leaders presented the hanging as a message to
Sunnis that their days as Iraq?s rulers are gone forever.

The message was clear in a statement issued by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, whose ?national unity? government of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds
has splintered into ethnic factions, with the Shiite religious groups that
swept last December?s elections increasingly assertive of their majority
rights.

The statement, which he signed before a battery of Iraqi television cameras,
amounted to a warning to the Sunnis that their hopes of ever regaining power
are lost. ?Saddam?s execution puts an end to all their pathetic gambles on a
return to dictatorship,? he said, referring to the former Baathists at the
core of the Sunni insurgency. ?I urge followers of the ousted regime to
reconsider their stance, because the door is still open to anyone who has no
innocent blood on his hands to help in rebuilding Iraq.?

At his death, Mr. Hussein had ceased to be much of a major rallying point,
even among diehard Sunnis, whose battles in the past three years have been
less about restoring Mr. Hussein to power ? a chimerical goal, considering
that the former leader was America?s most closely-guarded prisoner in Iraq ?
than about reversing the political transition from Sunni to Shiite rule.

Mr. Maliki short-circuited a bitter internal debate within the government
over how quickly to send Mr. Hussein to the gallows by signing an order for
the execution on Friday night, voiding a procedure that would have required
the three-man presidency council ? composed of a Kurd, a Sunni and Shiite ?
to all vote for the hanging.

Mr. Hussein and two of his associates were sentenced to death on Nov. 5 for
their roles in the persecution of the Shiite town of Dujail, where an
alleged assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein in 1982 was followed by
the execution of 148 Shiite men and teenage boys. After the three men?s
convictions, Mr. Maliki led the push for a hanging before the end of the
year.

After the sentencing, American officials were confident that appeals might
delay the hanging until the spring. But Mr. Maliki pressed for a speeded
appeal process, and secured a confirmation of the death sentences within
three weeks.

A senior Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
said Saturday that the Kurds had called for a delay, so the former Iraqi
dictator could be prosecuted for crimes against them. But the official said
there was no desire from the United States to seek a delay in the execution.

Administration officials said President Bush had gone to sleep before Mr.
Hussein?s hanging, but had been told it was imminent. He awoke Saturday at
4:40 a.m. Central Time, said a White House spokesman, David Almacy, and at
5:55 a.m. received a 10-minute telephone briefing about the execution from
his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley. The president and Mr.
Hadley discussed the execution and the worldwide reaction to it.

?The president remarked that he was pleased with the culmination of the
Iraqi judicial process, and justice was done,? Mr. Almacy said.

During the 1980s, the United States had supported Iraq under Mr. Hussein in
its war with Iran.

Among Shiites elsewhere in Iraq, there were sporadic eruptions of joy at the
hanging, marked by dancing in the streets and the firing of automatic
weapons into the air, as the early morning radio and television bulletins
carried word that Mr. Hussein was dead. But the more general mood, even
among Shiites, was one of subdued reflection, as if millions of Iraqis had
exhausted their emotional and psychological reserves during the long years
of violence.

Apart from the bombings, the most palpable Sunni reaction to the hanging
took the form of scattered protests, some of them violent, that swept
through Tikrit, Mr. Hussein?s hometown, and across Anbar Province, west of
Baghdad, the principal heartland of the Sunni insurgency.

In one major insurgent stronghold, Ramadi, American troops were reported to
have fired in the air to scatter demonstrators, who were marching through
the streets hoisting portraits of Mr. Hussein and firing automatic weapons
into the air. In Falluja, 30 miles west of Baghdad, witnesses said crowds of
angry men took to the streets within 90 minutes of the hanging, attacking a
police station and a courthouse and setting them ablaze.

Among those Iraqis who watched and re-watched the government?s video of the
hanging, there seemed to be a widespread view that Mr. Hussein accepted his
fate, at the end, with a composure and courage at odds with the psychotic
figure he cut during his 24 years in power. In that time, he ordered the
killings of thousands of his fellow citizens, many of whom ended up in mass
graves scattered across Iraq?s oil-rich deserts.

Throughout Saturday, Iraqi government officials put out conflicting signals
as to what they planned to do with Mr. Hussein?s body. An official in the
governor?s office in Salahaddin Province said that a delegation led by the
governor, Hamad Shegata, and including and the head of Mr. Hussein?s
Albu-Nasir tribe, Sheikh Ali Al-Nida, had traveled to Baghdad during the day
to arrange the handover of the body for burial in Awja. Muslim tradition
requires that burials be completed before dusk on the day of death.

But a political adviser to Prime Minister Maliki, Bassam al-Husseini, said
there were no plans to hand over the body until the risk of violence over
Mr. Hussein?s hanging subsided, a period that he said could run for weeks or
months.

In the meantime, he said, the body would be kept in ?a secret place,? where
it would be secure against desecration by his enemies. ?If we bury him in
Tikrit, people will dig him up and tear the body apart,? he said.

[Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from Crawford, Tex.]


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