THE Hamas Palestinian government has condemned the death sentence handed down to Saddam Hussein, recalling the help the Iraqi leader gave to the Palestinian people.
‘We as the Palestinian people support whoever supports our people and president Saddam Hussein was one of those,’ Fawzi Barhum, a Hamas spokesman, said.
Highly popular in the Palestinian territories, Saddam gave money to the families of people killed by Israeli forces and relatives of bombers when the intifada, or uprising, broke out in September 2000, until he was toppled by the US-led invasion in 2003.
Hundreds of injured Palestinians were also treated in Iraqi hospitals.
‘There was not a fair trial and those who judged him were those who participated in the affair of the Abu Ghraib prison and crimes in Palestine,’ Barhum said.
‘The trial took place under American occupation of Iraq,’ he added.
An Iraqi court on Sunday sentenced Saddam to death by hanging for approving the death sentences of 148 Shia villagers in the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982, for being members of the then banned al-Dawa party.
Al-Dawa was backed by Iran during the Iraq-Iran war which was then raging.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Palestinians rejoiced when Saddam ordered the firing of 39 Scud missiles at Israel. The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was one of the Arab leaders who publicly supported Saddam when he reclaimed Kuwait in 1990 as Iraq’s 19th province.
