January 03-2014
Saddam Hussein went to his death shouting against America, Israel—and Iranians.
The man who oversaw the hanging of Saddam seven years ago keeps a huge bust of Saddam in his office—with the actual noose used to snuff out the dictator’s life around the bust’s neck.
Mowaffak ar-Rubaie, Iraq’s former national security advisor, said Saddam was unbending to the very end, and never expressed any regret for what he had done.
“A criminal? True. A killer? True. A butcher? True. But he was strong until the end.
“I received him [Saddam] at the door. No one entered with us—no foreigners, and no Americans,” Rubaie said in an interview with Agence France Presse [AFP] at his office in Baghdad.
“He was wearing a jacket and a white shirt, normal and relaxed, and I didn’t see any signs of fear.
“Of course, some people want me to say that he collapsed or that he was drugged, but these facts are for history,” Rubaie said.
“I didn’t hear any regret from him, I didn’t hear any request for mercy from God from him, or a request for pardon.
“A person who is about to die usually says, ‘God, forgive my sins — I am coming to you.’ But he never said any of that,” Rubaie told AFP.
Saddam ruled Iraq for more than two decades marked by brutal repression, three disastrous wars and punishing international sanctions. He was hanged December 30, 2006, after being found guilty of crimes against humanity for the 1982 killings of 148 Shiite villagers in Dujail.
“When I brought him, he was handcuffed and holding a Qoran,” said Rubaie. “I took him to the judge’s room, where he read the list of indictments, as Saddam repeated: ‘Death to America! Death to Israel! Long live Palestine! Death to the Persian magi!”
Rubaie then took Saddam to the room in which he was to die. “He stopped, looked at the gallows, then he looked me up and down … and said: ‘Doctor, this is for men’.”
When it was time for Saddam to mount the gallows, his legs were still bound, so Rubaie and others had to drag him up the steps.
Just before he was hanged, witnesses taunted him with shouts of “Long live Imam Mohammed Baqr al-Sadr!” and “Moqtada! Moqtada!” — references to a Shia opponent of Saddam who was killed during his rule, and the dead man’s grandson, who rose to command a powerful militia after 2003.
Saddam sneered at the noisy ruckus: “Is this manhood?”
Rubaie said he pulled the lever to drop Saddam from the gallows, but the lever did not work. Another person he did not name then pulled it a second time, killing Saddam.
Just before he was hanged, Saddam began to recite the Shahada, the Muslim testament of faith.
“I testify that there is no god but God, and Mohammed…,” he began, but he was dropped before he could say the final words.
Rubaie went under the gallows to retrieve the body, which he said was put in a white bag and placed on a stretcher.
The body was then transported in an American helicopter from the prison where he was hanged to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s residence in the heavily fortified Green Zone.
The helicopter was crowded with people, Rubaie said, so the body had to be put on the floor, and the doors of the helicopter were left open during the flight, as the stretcher was too long to fit otherwise.
“I remember clearly that the sun was starting to rise” as the helicopter flew over Baghdad, Rubaie said.
At his residence, “the prime minister took our hands and said: ‘God bless you.’ I told him, ‘Go ahead and look at him.’ So he uncovered his face, and saw Saddam Hussein,” said Rubaie, who is still a close ally of the prime minister.
“I have never had such a very strange feeling,” said Rubaie, who was imprisoned three times during Saddam’s rule.
“He committed countless crimes, and he deserved to be hanged a thousand times, live again, and be hanged again. But the feeling, that feeling is a strange feeling,” he said. “The room was full of death.”
Rubaie said Saddam’s execution was set in motion after a video conference between Maliki and then US President George W. Bush, who asked the Iraqi prime minister: “What are you going to do with this criminal?”
Maliki replied: “We hang him.”
Rubaie said Bush then gave a thumbs up.