Tuesday 7th November, 2006 The Lynching of Saddam Hussein

By Gwynne Dyer

Occasionally, like any doomed man,Saddam Hussein played with the notionof a last-minute reprieve. “He’s told usmany times that we won’t be able to [avoida death sentence in his trial],” said Khalilal-Dulaimi, one of his lawyers, in June.“He knows that the sentence has beenissued from Washington.” But at thatpoint he was still indulging in the fantasythat this was part of an American plan torestore him to power. “He’ll be the lastresort; they’ll have to knock on his door,”said Dulaimi. “The United States will usethis sentence to pressure Saddam to saveit from this mess.”

By July, however, Saddam seems tohave accepted the fact that he was goingto be killed, for he asked the court that hebe shot by a firing squad, as is the right ofa military man, and not hanged like acommon criminal. More fantasy, sinceSaddam never served as a regular soldier.

On Sunday, the sentence of death byhanging was pronounced on Saddam andtwo of his fellow defendants. He respond-ed with a clearly rehearsed tirade —“Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi peo-ple! Down with the traitors!” — and thenleft the courtroom with a little smile play-ing on his face, as if he had won. Whichhe had, within the narrow confines ofwhat remains possible for him.

Unless the second trial that is nowunderway on other charges takes priority(which is not yet clear), it will take onlyten to twenty days for an appeal to be con-sidered by a panel of nine judges, andthen the death sentence must be carriedout within thirty days. But Saddam stillwins, because in the eyes of most SunniArabs in Iraq, and of many elsewhere, he

dies a martyr to the cause of Arab nation-alism. His sons are dead, his country is inruins, and he will die at the end of a rope— but he defied the West and he kept hisdignity, so he dies a hero.

He is not a hero, and Iraq would be abetter place if he had never been born. Inany properly constituted internationalcourt, he would have been found guilty ofthe same charges he faced in Iraq. But inan international court there would havebeen due process of law, and the Iraqigovernment could not have replacedjudges who wanted to respect the rights ofthe defendants, and the defence lawyerswould not have been murdered, and as aresult the trial would have had some cred-ibility. The trial in Iraq did not.

There was one obvious reason why theUnited States did not want Saddam to facethe same kind of impartial international

tribunal that tried Serbia’s PresidentSlobodan Milosevic and will soon tryCharles Taylor of Liberia. Such a tribu-nal would have the right to see documentsand hear testimony that would reveal theextent of US complicity in Saddam’scrimes in the earlier phase of his career,when the Reagan administration was sup-porting Iraq in the 1980-88 war againstIran. Hence the kangaroo court inBaghdad, and all the grotesqueries thatensued.

The first chief judge, Rizgar Amin,resigned last January after governmentcomplaints that he had failed to imposeorder in his court (i.e. had allowedSaddam to speak in his own defence toooften). Five weeks later his successor,Sayeed al-Hammashi, was removed whenit was discovered that he had been aBaath Party member. And the chief judge

appointed to run the second trial,Abdullah al-Amiri, was removed inSeptember for being too sympathetic toSaddam.

Meanwhile, Saddam’s defence lawyersdied like flies. The first to go, SaadounJanabi, was “arrested” last year by menclaiming to be from the Shia-controlledInterior Ministry police and later founddead in Sadr City, the Shia stronghold inBaghdad. The second, Adel al-Zubeidi,was shot shortly afterwards, whereuponanother fled the country. And the chiefdefence lawyer, Khamis al-Obaidi, wasabducted in June. He, too, was arrestedby men in police uniforms, and his bodywas found, with both arms broken andeight bullet wounds, dumped in the sameplace in Sadr City.

After Obeidi’s murder Saddam’slawyers withdrew from the trial entirely,

demanding that it be transferred outsideIraq, and Saddam himself went onhunger strike. He gave that up after six-teen days of being force-fed by tubespushed up his nostrils, and sat throughthe remainder of his trials with no legalrepresentation other than a court-appointed lawyer who refused to befilmed or photographed, spoke through amicrophone that deliberately distortedhis voice, and was rejected as “an enemyof the people” by Saddam.

Saddam has not had a fair trial,although that, too, would certainly havefound him guilty. He is the victim of astate-sponsored lynching, and so, formany people, he will die a martyr. Thatwill make little difference in Iraq, wherepeople have more immediate things toworry about, but it certainly does nothelp the cause of international law.

5Tuesday 7th November, 2006

Due to popular public demand to introducelottery tickets to be drawn everyday of theweek, the Development Lotteries Board re-launches “Jayoda” today.

For the first time in Sri Lanka’s LotteriesSystem, in addition the snowballing jackpot,a consolation prize of Rs. 1 million or a houseworth over a million would be on offer.

The face of the ticket is also distinct as ithas two colour schemes, to distinguishbetween two different draws. Tickets with yel-low background will be drawn every Mondayand tickets with orange background everyThursday.

The “Jayoda” jackpot will be drawn fromsix lucky numbers using six different cagescontaining numbers that range from 0-9 withan additional super number ranging from 1-26 and of which will be drawn from a sepa-rate machine as to determine the winner ofthe snowballing super jackpot that starts withan initial amount of Rs. 10 million.

In addition to cash prizes on offer, everynon-winner will be included in a special drawto be held soon after the main draw. Thisdraw will have prizes that make up ofMotorcycles worth over Rs. 65, 000 and withthe winners being drawn from eight differentdistricts, through the brocade of the non-win-ning tickets.

DLB has always been at the forefront ofinnovation in Sri Lanka’s Lottery Industry as itwas the first to introduce instant winningswith the scratch and win feature and withSaturday Fortune tickets being one of thehighest contributors towards the President’sFund.

Uniquely DLB with this novelty conceptafter conducting wide and stringent marketresearch on its lottery ticket “Jayoda”, hasdesigned a new and different prize structureas well, with prizes being awarded as long asthe matching numbers are identified fromleft to right, right to left or from both sides,thereby giving purchasers more chances towin.

High end security systems and instantdelivery of prizes are DLB’s key strengths. Thetickets are printed overseas in a safe andstate-of-the-art computerized environmentand with draw procedures being tamper proofwith constant back checks.

Development Lotteries Board was estab-lished in 1983 and over the years has assist-ed in the economic development of the coun-try by contributing all of its profits to thePresident’s Fund, and of which 50% is direct-ed to the Mahapola Scholarship Fund.

With this re-launch of “Jayoda”, DLB aimsto surpass Rs. 1 billion from all it’s lotterybrands and further contribute towards thePresident’s Fund which supports numerousprojects to enhance the living conditions ofthe rural communities in Sri Lanka as well inthe areas of education and health-care.

The fund also contributes to the develop-ment of all religious institutions, welfareorganizations, arts, sports bodies and mostimportantly creates self-employment to thou-sands through their strategic islandwide deal-er network.

The Lynching of Saddam Hussein

Jayoda to bedrawn every dayon publicdemand