Saddam DEATH by Hanging ~ Just Annouced 4 Seconds Ago

Hussein sentenced to death
(AP)Saddam Hussein was sentenced Sunday to death by hanging for his role in a brutal crackdown nearly 25 years ago in Dujail. A five-member tribunal is meeting amid heavy security and sweeping curfews in Baghdad and elsewhere, as authorities brace for violent reactions.
Iraq’s High Tribunal on Sunday found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to hang, as the visibly shaken former leader shouted “God is great!”
His half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of the former Revolutionary Court, were sentenced to join Saddam on the gallows.
After the verdict was read, a trembling Saddam yelled out, “Life for the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!”
Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison. Three other co-defendants were convicted of murder and torture and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. One defendant was acquitted for lack of evidence.
Baghdad was under a total curfew to guard against violence and shops were shuttered and pedestrians and vehicles almost completely absent from the streets of the city of 6 million people.
Iraqi security forces and U.S. troops mounted additional patrols, but no major incidents had been reported by midmorning, said police Maj. Mahir Hamad Mousa of the al-Khansa station in Baghdad’s Jadeeda district.
“There is close cooperation between Iraqi and coalition forces in maintaining the curfew,” Mousa said. “We have fully prepared for this duty,” he said.
The verdict’s announcement marks a political and social watershed for Iraqis who endured more than two decades of brutal rule under the former leader.
A guilty verdict would likely enrage hard-liners among Saddam’s fellow Sunnis, who made up the bulk of the former ruling class. The country’s majority Shiites, who were persecuted under the former leader but now largely control the government, will likely view such an outcome as a cause of celebration.
Saddam and his seven co-defendants had been tried over a wave of revenge killings carried out in the city of Dujail following a 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam, and Saddam faces additional charges over an alleged massacre of Kurdish civilians.
Even with the verdict imminent, Saddam’s lawyers and some Sunni politicians called for the court proceedings to be suspended.
“It has become clear to the Iraqi people and the whole world that this court is politicized 100 percent,” Salih al-Mutlaq, head of the second largest Sunni parliamentarian block, told the Doha-based al-Jazeera satellite channel.
Al-Mutlaq accused the U.S. and Iraqi governments of interfering with the work of the court and said a verdict would further polarize Iraqi society, already traumatized by sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis.
“This verdict will be the last nail in the coffin of the national reconciliation plan and the political process,” al-Mutlaq said. “I call upon Arab leaders and … to interfere for the sake of Iraq’s unity.”
The head of another prominent Sunni group, Harith al-Dhari, said any verdict should be delayed until after the departure of U.S. forces, who toppled Saddam following their March 2003 invasion of the country.
“If this court issues the verdict, I would consider it to be illegal, illegitimate and political,” al-Dhari told al-Arabiya, viewed throughout the Arab world.
Echoing those sentiments, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a hard-line Sunni clerical group, demanded that Saddam’s trial be postponed until “the occupation leaves.”
One of Saddam’s lawyers, former Qatari justice minister Najeeb al-Nu’aimi, said Saddam and his co-defendants had not been given sufficient time to present their cases.
“The court is not neutral. It lacks legitimacy,” al-Nu’aimi said.
The curfew was only lightly observed in Baghdad’s sprawling Shiite slum of Sadr City, where the Mahdi Army militia of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr holds sway.
Local police commander Col. Hassan Challoub said special reaction teams made up of the Iraqi police, army and the Interior Ministry commandos units are on patrol in the city.
“No incident and nothing abnormal is reported so far,” Challoub said.