"I've heard that it's going to be a couple more days, probably," the official said, while Bush took a holiday break at his Texas ranch. 

He said he had heard from US officials in Baghdad that the execution would not be Thursday US time or Friday Baghdad time. "It's going to be maybe another day or so," he official said. 

He said the government of Iraq would most likely inform US officials about the timing of the execution when it gets closer. 

The US official's comments were at odds with those of Iraqi officials who earlier backed away from suggestions Saddam would be hanged within a month. The officials said that the hanging would occur within 30 days only if Iraq's president issues a decree it takes place immediately, which seemed unlikely. 

Saddam loses death sentence appeal
26 Dec, 2006.BAGHDAD: An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld a ruling that Saddam Hussein should hang for crimes against humanity. 
Under the statute governing the Iraqi High Tribunal, the death sentence must be carried out within the next 30 days. The former Iraqi leader and two former aides were sentenced to death in November for crimes against humanity over the 
killings of 148 Shi'ites from the town of Dujail after he escaped assassination there in 1982. 

"The court just upheld the verdict and sentence," Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said. When asked if the court had confirmed a Nov. 5 verdict, court spokesman Raed Juhi said: "Yes, I think so." 

He said he expected the tribunal head to make a statement within an hour. Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander also received the death penalty for their part in the killing, torturing and deporting of hundreds of Dujailis. It was not immediately clear whether they too had lost their appeals. 

In a comprehensive report last month, New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned the verdict as unsound, saying the court had been guilty of so many shortcomings that a fair trial had been impossible. 

It said the court lacked the expertise for such a complex trial, had failed to give the defence advance notice of key documents, while statements by government officials had undermined its independence and perceived impartiality. 
India on Tuesday expressed its disagreement with the decision of the Iraqi appeals court upholding the death sentence awarded to Saddam Hussain. 

In a statement, external affairs ministry spokesperson Navtej Sarna, said: "We have seen reports which said that the appeals court has confirmed the death sentence awarded to Hussain. It is our hope that the sentence will not be carried out and the former president's life will be spared." 

He further expressed the hope that "no steps are taken which might obstruct reconciliation and delay the restoration of peace in Iraq". 

India had come up with a similar reaction when an Iraqi court sentenced the former Iraqi ruler to death for the killing of 142 Shias allegedly to avenge an assassination attempt on him. 

At that time, it had also said that the process of trial must appear credible, a remark widely seen as endorsing the view that the death sentence represented the victor's justice.
 
 
 

Saddam verdict divides Shias, Sunnis
6 Nov, 2006. LUCKNOW: Shia and Sunni Muslims in Uttar Pradesh - as perhaps in the rest of the country - stand divided on the death sentence awarded to ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. While leading Shia scholars and clerics see the verdict as divine retribution for a man who is accused of killing Shias when he ruled Iraq, their Sunni counterparts condemn Sunday's ruling as an American design. 
Protest demonstrations have been organised in a few cities of the state, which is the country’s most populous Muslim state. Around 30 million of the country’s estimated 140 million Muslims reside here. Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, a Shia scholar and senior vice president of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, declared on Monday: "Saddam Hussein was responsible for the brutal massacre of hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims in Iraq. Even a hundred death sentences would not be enough for him." Maulana Mirza Mohammad Athar, who heads the newly formed All-India Shia Personal Law Board, also came out in support of the Iraqi court verdict. "A tyrant must be punished for his tyranny," he told journalists. 
Asked if he was happy, Maulana Athar shot back: "This is not an issue over which one can be happy or unhappy. All I can say is that the man has met his nemesis, that's all." 
Sunni religious heads hold a diametrically opposite view and blamed it all on the US. 
"It is not a court verdict; it simply demonstrates the high-handedness of the President George Bush who had personal scores to settle with Saddam Hussein," Maulana Khalid Rasheed, the Naib Imam of Lucknow and head of Firangi Mahal, an internationally acclaimed Islamic institution here, said. 
Maulana Rasheed pointed out: "After all, Bush's repeated allegations that Saddam was secretly holding on to weapons of mass destruction turned out to be baseless and false." 
All-India Muslim Personal Law Board legal adviser Zafaryab Jilani agreed with Maulana Rasheed. 
"This is not a judgement from an independent court. It is clearly a pre-determined dictat from Washington. We strongly oppose this," he told reporters. 
"After all Saddam was targeted by the US simply because he refused to be their tool." 
All India Muslim Women's Law Board chief Shaista Ambar too denounced the death sentence. 
"The whole exercise was a farce and carried out under US pressure. It is time the Indian government condemns the decision." 
Ambar staged a symbolic protest demonstration before the Uttar Pradesh assembly here Monday. 
An Iraqi court set up by the US Sunday sentenced Saddam Hussein to death for "crimes against humanity" along with his half brother Harzan al-Tikrit and former judge Awad al-Bander. 
They were all accused of killing, torturing and deporting hundreds of people from a Shia town after a failed assassination attempt against Saddam Hussein in 1982.
 
 

NEW DELHI: India reacted guardedly to the award of death sentence to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussain on Sunday, saying such verdicts should not appear to be "victor's justice" and should be acceptable to people of the country and international community. 
"Such life and death decisions require credible due process of law, which does not appear to be victor's justice and is acceptable to the people of Iraq as well as the international community," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said here in a statement. 
He said India has always stood for a peaceful resolution of the problems of Iraq and "we hope that this verdict will not add to the suffering of the people of Iraq." Mukherjee noted that there is an automatic appeal procedure.

Death for Saddam
2 aides Verdict to go to 9-judge appeals panel 

Baghdad, November 5
Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced today to hang for crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 persons in a single town, as the ousted leader, trembling and defiant, shouted “God is great!”

As he, his half brother and another senior official in his regime were convicted and sentenced to death, Saddam, 69, yelled out, “Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!” The trial brought Saddam and his co-defendants before their accusers in what was one of the most highly publicised and heavily reported trials of its kind since the Nuremberg tribunals for members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime and its slaughter of six million Jews in the World War II Holocaust.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite Prime Minister, declared the verdicts as history’s judgement on a whole era.

“The verdict placed on the heads of the former regime does not represent a verdict for any one person. It is a verdict on a whole dark era that was unmatched in Iraq’s history,” al-Maliki said after the session. 

Some feared the verdicts could intensify Iraq’s sectarian violence after a trial that stretched over nine months in 39 sessions and ended nearly three months ago. Clashes immediately broke out today in north Baghdad’s Sunni Azamiyah district. Elsewhere in the capital, celebratory gunfire rang out.

“This government will be responsible for the consequences, with the deaths of hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands, whose blood will be shed,” Salih al-Mutlaq, a Sunni political leader, told the al-Arabiya satellite television station. 

Saddam and his seven co-defendants were on trial for a wave of revenge killings carried out in the city of Dujail following a 1982 assassination attempt on the former dictator. Al-Maliki’s Islamic Dawa party, then an underground opposition, has claimed responsibility for organising the attempt on Saddam’s life.

In the streets of Dujail, a Tigris river city of 84,000, people celebrated and burned pictures of their former tormentor as the verdict was read.

The death sentences automatically go to a nine-judge appeals panel, which has unlimited time to review the case. If the verdicts and sentences are upheld, the executions must be carried out within 30 days.

A court official told The Associated Press that the appeals process was likely to take three to four weeks once the formal paperwork was submitted.

During today’s hearing, Saddam initially refused the chief judge’s order to rise; two bailiffs pulled the ousted ruler to his feet and he remained standing through the sentencing, sometimes wagging his finger at the judge. 

Before the session began, one of Saddam’s lawyers, former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark, was ejected from the courtroom after handing the judge a memorandum in which he called the trial a travesty.

Chief Judge Raouf Abdul-Rahman pointed to Clark and said in English, “Get out.”

In addition to the former Iraqi dictator and Barzan Ibrahim, his former intelligence chief and half brother, the Iraqi High Tribunal convicted and sentenced Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the head of Iraq’s former Revolutionary Court, to death by hanging. 

Iraq’s former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Three defendants were sentenced to 15 years in prison for torture and premeditated murder. Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid and his son Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid, along with Ali Dayih Ali, were believed responsible for the Dujail arrests.

Mohammed Azawi Ali, a former Dujail Baath Party official, was acquitted for lack of evidence and immediately freed.

He faces additional charges in a separate case over an alleged massacre of Kurdish civilians.

In Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, 1,000 persons defied the curfew and carried pictures of the city’s favourite son through the streets

Saddam: I will die without fear

Amman, November 5
A defiant Saddam Hussein today said he would die without fear and the US occupiers of his country would leave humiliated like they did in Vietnam, his lawyers said. They said a jovial and highly spirited Saddam chatted with them for more than three hours about the violence in Iraq and mounting US losses just hours before the death sentence was pronounced today in his trial for crimes against humanity.

The sentence appeared to be the least of his concerns, they said, his focus instead being on the insurgency and the rising US death toll.

''He was totally unconcerned about the verdict. In fact, there was derision about the court and this farce,'' Khalil al-Dulaimi, the defence team's chief lawyer, said on the telephone from Baghdad.

''I will die with honour and with no fear, with pride for my country and my Arab nation, but the US occupiers will leave in humiliation and defeat,'' Saddam was quoted by the lawyers as saying.

Saddam seemed ecstatic when another lawyer gave him the Arabic version of the book ''My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope'' by Paul Bremer, who led the US civilian occupation authority after the 2003 invasion.

Key dates in Saddam’s life

April 28, 1937: Born in the village of Uja, near Tikrit. His father died or disappeared before he was born.

1957: Joins the radical, secular nationalist Baath Party at age 20.

1959: Flees Iraq for Cairo, Egypt, after taking part in an attempt to assassinate the country's ruler, Gen Abdul-Karim Kassim, and is sentenced to death in absentia.

1963: Returns to Iraq after the Baath Party overthrows Kassim, but then is imprisoned after Baath leadership is ousted.

1967: Escapes and takes charge of the underground Baath Party's secret internal security organisation.

July 1968: Baath Party wins back power under the leadership of Gen Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who appoints Saddam, his distant cousin, as his deputy. Saddam purges key party figures, deports thousands of Shiites of Iranian origin and supervises the state takeover of Iraq's oil industry and land reforms.

1979: Saddam forces al-Bakr to resign. Hundreds of Baath and military officials are executed in purge.

September 22, 1980: Iraqi forces invade Iran, launching an eight-year war that costs hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides and devastates Saddam's plans to transform Iraq into a developed, prosperous country.

1982: Shiite guerrillas ambush Saddam's convoy in Dujail. He escapes. About 150 Shiites are killed in the wake of the assassination attempt.

1987: Saddam launches his 'Anfal' campaign against Iraqi Kurdish rebels, in which tens of thousands, many of them civilians, are killed.

August 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait.

January 1991: A US-led coalition attacks to push Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

March 20, 2003: US-led forces invade Iraq. Within three weeks, Iraq's army collapses and Baghdad falls. Saddam flees to his northern homeland.

July 2003: Sons Odai and Qusai are killed in a gunbattle with US troops in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

December 13, 2003: US soldiers discover a bearded and disheveled Saddam hiding in an underground bunker in Adwar, village south of Tikrit.

October 19, 2005: Saddam and seven others go on trial for the Dujail killings.

August 21, 2006: Saddam and seven co-defendants go on trial in a new case, for the Anfal crackdown.

November 5, 2006: Saddam is found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging.

A quieter Saddam prays in court