DUJAIL: Chants of "Execute the criminal" echoed around the main square of the small Iraqi town of Dujail yesterday as Saddam Hussein went on trial for the execution of 143 of its residents more than 20 years ago.
In the view of the victims' families, death is too kind a punishment for their ousted president. His family should be executed with him in the same spirit of reprisal that he showed after a failed attempt on his life in 1982. "Saddam Hussein should be executed, him and his whole family," chanted the 100 or so demonstrators who gathered to greet the appearance of Saddam and seven co-defendants in the dock in a Baghdad courtroom.
| Except for Uday, and Qusay; curiously, they aren't around to be executed ... |
"Death to Saddam," screamed the placards brandished by the demonstrators alongside pictures of their lost loved ones. "We cannot move on as long as Saddam remains alive. The people of Dujail demand the tyrant's execution."
The town still bears the scars of the reprisals exacted by Saddam's security services in razed homes and uprooted orchards. "Saddam, his daughters, his entire family should be executed," said Hadia Najem Abbud, who lost five brothers in the punishment operation, one of them just turned 11. Hussein Zeidan concurred. "He showed no pity for innocent civilians and killed women and children.
"We call on the government to demand the extradition of his fugitive daughters from Jordan and try and execute them too, just like he did to our kids."
Like other bereaved relatives, Zeidan still has no idea where his lost loved ones are buried. Scores of mass graves have been identified around Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion but none of the remains of the missing have yet been located. "Karim was 20 when they took him away in front of his seven-months pregnant wife," said Mona Zeid of her missing brother. "He was executed and his body was never handed back to us," she said. Police and troops manned checkpoints on all roads leading into Dujail for the opening of Saddam's trial in a reminder that his prosecution is not universally welcomed.
For the 50,000 or so residents of the town of Dujail just north of Baghdad, like the rest of Iraq's Shiite majority community, the passing of his Sunni Arab-dominated regime is celebrated. But among Sunnis who benefited from his regime, its overthrow is widely mourned, sometimes opposed with violence.
In the ousted president's hometown of Tikrit, loyalists took to the streets to denounce the "foreign agents" of the "traitor government" that had put him on trial. US troops posted around Saddam's former palace in the city centre fired warning shots to disperse the demonstrators who poured on to the streets after a rally in a nearby stadium. "With our soul, with our blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for you Saddam," the protestors chanted in the traditional oath of loyalty to the old regime.
The demonstators, some of whom were armed, then gathered near the city's main mosque in a tense standoff with police manning a roadblock just 500 metres (yards) away. The rally was the third in Tikrit in support of Saddam in just 24 hours and was mirrored in other towns across the Sunni belt of north central Iraq.
In the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah, residents insisted their former president should never have been put on trial as any offences he committed were in defence of Iraq and the stability of its government. "Even (US President George W.) Bush would have done the same if his motorcade had been attacked," said Shaker Mohammed in reference to the 1982 punishment killings.
| Couldn't be more wrong, Shaker. |
In the smart Baghdad neighbourhood of Karrada, residents said Saddam needed to be judged by the standards of the region. "If Saddam is executed, then all Arab dictators should be," said teacher Raed Ihsan. "He was actually the least bad."
| As noted in the comments, there's an idea ... |
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