High noon in Baghdad as Saddam gets death

By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - In the end, when the hour finally came, Saddam Hussein stood up on shaky legs to hear his verdict.

But once the judge sentenced him to hang, the old defiant Saddam was back, shouting "Down with the invaders! Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest), before he was led away by guards.

Broadcast around the world, Sunday's courtroom drama was the highlight of Saddam's sometimes shambolic, often theatrical appearances since he was dragged, bearded and dishevelled, by American soldiers from a hole in the ground three years ago.

"The court has decided to sentence Saddam Hussein al-Majid to be hanged until he is dead for crimes against humanity," chief judge Abdul Rahman said in a historic judgement, capping a process that adds a new chapter to the development of war crimes law since Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg 60 years ago.

Locked down by curfew to avert attacks from vengeful Saddam loyalists, Iraqis held their breath ahead of the verdict read at midday -- high noon for Saddam as he was brought in, alone and subdued, to face judgement for this three decades in power.

Once the sentence was announced in the heavily fortified courtroom, a palatial former office of Saddam's Baath party, it sparked joy among the Shi'ites he oppressed and resentment among Sunnis -- an ominous sign of sectarian passions gripping Iraq.

Celebratory gunfire rang out in Baghdad's eastern Shi'ite areas. Clashes broke out in Sunni neighbourhoods on the western side of the Tigris, rapidly becoming a de facto frontier between the two communities. Mortars later hit the Green Zone, the fortified government compound where the trial has taken place.

Saddam, whose name means "one who confronts" in Arabic, was sentenced to death before, in absentia as an underground militant in 1959, 10 years before he used his street fighter skills to get his Baath party into power in a 1968 coup.

Toppled by America's military might in 2003, the former strongman who liked to project bravado images of himself swimming rivers and firing a shotgun into the air during military parades, might not escape his fate this time.

Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki welcomed the verdict as the "the punishment he deserves". America's envoy in Baghdad, whose troops are holding Saddam in a high-security cell, said it "closed the book on Saddam and his regime".

"SHOOT ME"

In characteristic grandstanding, Saddam, who has compared himself to Iraq's Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar who conquered Jerusalem, has told his lawyers he does not fear death.

He told the court this year he should face a firing squad, not the hangman, as a military man -- though his military career began only when he appointed himself commander on taking power.

That request seems unlikely to be granted. Iraq's penal code, written under Saddam himself, specifies hanging "in prison or elsewhere". An execution could come next year if an automatic appeal, which has no set time limit, fails.

As president, he wore in public traditional Iraqi peasant robes, an olive-green military uniform or Western suits, appealing variously to Arab nationalism, Islam and patriotism.

On Sunday, he was bearded and tieless in a black suit and clutching a Koran, a pious image he has favoured in court.

Saddam rose from impoverished beginnings in Tikrit through native wit, tribal connections and a willingness to use violence. His downfall had its roots in his invasions of Iran in 1980, which ravaged a previously oil-rich economy, and Kuwait in 1990, which made him a crippled pariah for the West.

Having held on to power with much bloodshed when U.S.-led forces did not follow through on their victory in the 1991 Gulf War, he was eventually toppled in a lightning three-week war and captured eight months later, giving up without firing a shot.

Humiliated by U.S. troops who filmed their captive looking dishevelled and being probed by a medic, he has restored a measure of dignity, neatly bearded and besuited throughout a trial in which he has insisted he is still president of Iraq.

But when the end came, for all his effort to stand and face his judgement, indignity was again close at hand -- a court guard chewed gum and stood laughing, mocking Iraq's fallen leader.

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