"Whatever happened to Saddam Hussein look-a-likes?"


New president opposes execution -- even for Hussein
But Shiite bloc says it wants no mercy for former leader
Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post

Tuesday, April 19, 2005


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Baghdad -- The Shiite Muslim bloc leading Iraq's new government will oppose any move to spare former President Saddam Hussein's life if a special tribunal convicts and condemns him, a spokesman for the alliance said Monday.

"We will deal with it immediately," said Ali al-Dabagh, spokesman for the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance. That group is now forming a government with a Kurdish alliance following the first post-Hussein elections in January. Al- Dabagh said the next courtroom activity in Hussein's trial is tentatively expected in July, with the trial itself to begin before the end of the year.

Al-Dabagh was reacting to a BBC interview with the new president, Jalal Talabani, a Sunni Kurd and a death-penalty opponent. Talabani said he would "go on a holiday" rather than sign an execution order for Hussein.

However, the signatures of his two vice presidents would suffice to authorize the execution, Talabani said, making any abstention on his part a token gesture.

Talabani said he knew he represented a minority voice, possibly the only voice, in Iraq's still-forming government in his wish to save the ousted leader from capital punishment.

"I said my word, but no one is listening to me, to be frank with you," Talabani told the BBC. "My two partners in the presidency, the government, the house, all of them are for sentencing Saddam Hussein to death before the court will decide."

Hussein and other senior officials from his government are being held in what is believed to be a U.S. detention center near Baghdad's airport. Construction of a court for the five-judge tribunal is expected to be finished this month.

Talabani also said in the interview that he thought executing Hussein would deflate the Sunni Muslim-led insurgency.

Al-Dabagh said relatives of Hussein's victims, like most Iraqis, didn't want mercy for the former leader, who he said represents "a unique case in Iraq -- the massacres and mass graves."

"The families of the victims have to see the government will appreciate the court" in its decision, al-Dabagh added.

Also Monday, a high-ranking adviser in the Defense Ministry was assassinated by armed gunmen at his house in Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

Maj. Gen. Adnan Qaragholi was killed just after 11 p.m. when 10 gunmen forced their way into his house in the Doura neighborhood in southern Baghdad and shot him to death, Interior Ministry officials said.

Insurgents try to assassinate the leaders of Iraq's fledgling military and the police almost daily, and many officers have been killed. Most high- ranking members have a corps of bodyguards, and it was not clear Monday night how the assassins, who arrived in three cars, got into Qaragholi's house, or whether there was a firefight. The gunmen escaped without being caught, and neighbors alerted the police to the killing, the officials said.

The Doura neighborhood has been one of the most common places for assassination attempts. Armed gangs roam the area at will, and the police acknowledge that they have little control there.

The killing of Qaragholi was one of at least two on Monday. A businessman who runs a travel agency also was shot and killed in the western neighborhood of Ghazaliya at noon, Interior Ministry officials said. The businessman, Tariq Hasoun Khadim, was the manager of the Travel Call Co., based in the Green Zone, the fortified compound that houses Iraq's government.

Meanwhile, Iraqi police backed by U.S. military helicopters swept into a town southeast of Baghdad where Sunni militants were alleged to be holding scores of Shiite hostages. But the troops found only empty streets as jittery townspeople hid indoors.

Security forces found no hostages in Madaen, said Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. The sweep appeared to end a murky four- day drama in which rumors of Sunnis taking hostages in a bid to drive Shiites from Madaen threatened to make the town a flash point for growing Shiite-Sunni tensions throughout the country.

Interior Minister Falah Naqib and other leaders denounced what they said were instigators trying to stir up sectarian conflict by spreading lies. Residents of the southern city of Basra and other communities demonstrated in support of Muslim unity.

The New York Times contributed to this report.

Arguing over the sentence before he's been tried.. excellent.. shows Iraq to have fully adopted American ideals on justice after all..

guilty until proven guilty..

Saddam should talk to Michael Jackson about borrowing a few lawyers..

there's got to be a movie of the week in this..I mean, if Hollywood is already ' developing ' scripts on 9/11 '.. they are looking at doing a ' life and times' of Saddam.. Hell, just look at all the Hitler films that have been made.. Time we got a new ' global bad guy '...

But why should they kill him? It makes no sense we can interrogate him,then kill him. We need to at least get some information out of him before we start slaughtering people.