SADDAM HUSSEIN EXECUTED

Last updated: Saturday, December 30, 2006

SADDAM HUSSEIN EXECUTED

Former Iraqi President SADDAM HUSSEIN has been executed by hanging for crimes against humanity.

The death sentence was carried out just before 6am local time at a secure facility in northern Baghdad and witnessed by a representative of the Iraqi prime minister and a Sunni Muslim cleric.

Video footage of Hussein being led to the gallows, where he refused to wear the customary hood, has since been shown on Iraqi state TV.

Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on 5 November (05) after being tried for the 1982 killings of 148 Shias in the town of Dujail.

Iraqi National Security Adviser MOUWAFAK AL-RUBAIE, who witnessed the execution, described the moments before his death, saying, "We took him to the gallows and he was saying some few slogans. He was very, very, very, broken."

Two co-defendants, Saddam Hussein's half-brother and a former chief judge, are to be executed at a later date.

Hussein ruled Iraq from 1979 until he was toppled by invading US-led forces in 2003.

Source: WENN

| Saturday, December 30, 2006

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