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Diberitakan Saddam telah digantung pukul 11 pagi tadi (waktu KL). Jika ianya benar, satu lagi plot Bush berjaya dilaksanakan di Iraq - zy.

Saddam hanged
30 December

Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president, has been hanged, according to Iraqi and US officials.

Reports on Al Hurra, a US-backed television station, said that Saddam was executed shortly before 6am (03:00 GMT) on Saturday.

Iraq's deputy foreign minister, Labeed Abbawi, said: "He has been executed. It has been officially announced that he has been executed."

George Bush said the execution was an important milestone on the country's path to democracy.

"Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself," the US president said in a statement.

The former Iraqi president, who was ousted in April 2003 by a US-led invasion, had been convicted last month of crimes against humanity over the killings of 148 Shia villagers from Dujail after a failed assassination attempt in 1982.

An appeals court upheld the death penalty on Tuesday and the Iraqi government rushed through the procedures to hang him by the end of the year and before the Eid al-Adha holiday that starts on Saturday.

The government had kept details of its plans shrouded in secrecy amid concerns that it may provoke a violent backlash from his former supporters with Iraq on the brink of civil war.

Saddam's conviction on November 5 was hailed by George Bush, the US president, as a triumph for the democracy he promised to foster in Iraq after the invasion almost four years ago.

With U.S. public support for the war falling as the number of American dead approaches 3,000, Washington is likely to welcome the death of Saddam, despite misgivings among many allies about capital punishment.

But the hanging could complicate efforts by Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, to heal Iraq's sectarian divisions as violence between Shia and Sunni Muslims grows and threatens to pitch the country into full-scale civil war.

Oppression

During his three decades in power, Saddam was accused of widespread oppression of political opponents and genocide against Kurds in northern Iraq. His execution means that he will never face justice on those charges.

Saddam insisted during his trial that he was still the president of Iraq. He said in a letter written after his conviction that he offered himself as a "sacrifice".

"If my soul goes down this path [of martyrdom] it will face God in serenity," he wrote in the letter.

Issam Jhazzawi, one of Saddam's defence lawyers, said on Friday that Saddam's daughters in Jordan were bracing for his imminent death.

"The family are praying for him every minute and are calling on God that He let his soul rest in peace among the martyrs," he said.

A source close to the family said that Saddam's daughter, Raghd, "is asking that his body be buried in Yemen temporarily until Iraq is liberated and it can be reburied in Iraq". alJazeera.

Labels: Berita, Iraq, Luar Negeri