THE court that convicted President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to be hung for crimes against humanity was a creation of imperialism, made up of a gang of puppets specially trained in London to do the job for the US and the UK, under statutes and provisions worked out by British lawyers and the British state.
His crime, of course, was that he became a thorn in the side of US and UK imperialism and its ambitions in the Middle East.
This is the crime that he is to be hung for.
In fact his was not a trial at all, it was a lynching party. During its course three defence lawyers were assassinated, the chief judge was ousted by the puppet government, and defence lawyers were repeatedly thrown out of the court, or kept out of the country by death threats.
In 1982, an attempt was made to assassinate President Saddam Hussein in Dujail. The attempt was organised by the Dawa Party. In the aftermath of the attempt it has been alleged that 148 people were killed.
The just-concluded trial was presided over by judges and supervised by a Prime Minister who are leading members of the very same Dawa Party, making it clear that the ‘trial’ itself was a continuation of the failed assassination attempt of 1982.
At the trial itself, Saddam declared that he had been the victim of a well-organised assassination attempt at Dujail. The official line upheld by the court and the Dawa judges and the Dawa Party in the government was that no assassination attempt had taken place at all.
The ‘trial’ was a frame-up from top to bottom, to try to secure the US-UK occupation in the face of the growing insurgency, and to try to secure the puppet regime, which is already split and divided, with its leaders fearful of stepping outside the US Green Zone fortress.
In a situation where even sections of the bourgeois media are admitting that the Iraqi people would have Saddam back tomorrow if they were allowed to, so dreadful has been the occupation, the Saddam death sentence can only stoke up the fires of the insurgency.
The situation facing the occupiers is in fact graver than that facing Saddam Hussein.
What price the occupation of Basra and the south by the UK, when the British consulate and a large number of consulate employees have had to be evacuated from that great city because it is now recognised that the British army is incapable of defending it?
The position of British imperialism is now so weakened that it has been caught sneaking a top foreign office official into Damascus to plead with Bashar al Assad to quit his alliance with Iran in order to stab the Palestinian and Lebanese people in the back.
This is an offer that Assad cannot accept. Britain faces no other future than scuttling out of the Middle East region with its tail between its legs.
What price the US occupation of western Iraq, northern Iraq and Baghdad when large numbers of US troops will die in the next 50 days between the conviction and the execution of the Iraqi president?
If Saddam is executed he will die a hero, and millions of young Arabs will take his place all over the Arab world, not just in Iraq and Palestine.
The imperialists, however, face being run out of Iraq, just as shamefully as the US forces were run out of Vietnam 30 years ago.
There will be no gains for them out of the desperate attempt to harm the insurgency, and strengthen the chances of survival for the puppet regime in the Green Zone, by assassinating Saddam.
We repeat, the assassination of Saddam will rouse the Arab masses as never before.
Having sown the wind, the imperialists will now reap the revolutionary whirlwind! Workers in the west must give their full support to the Iraqi and Arab people by bringing down the Bush and Blair regimes and going forward to a workers’ government in Britain.
The former Iraqi leader was convicted over the killing of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail following an assassination attempt on him in 1982.
His half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq’s former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar were also sentenced to death.
Former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan got life in jail and three others received 15 year prison terms.
Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!
When called to court, Saddam Hussein, dressed in his usual dark suit and white shirt and carrying a Koran, walked to his customary seat and sat down.
Immediately after the sentencing, violence reportedly broke out in the mainly Sunni Azamiya district of Baghdad, with machine guns and mortars being fired.
Saddam Hussein, former Iraqi president: found guilty and sentenced to death
Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein’s half-brother: found guilty and sentenced to death
Awad Hamed al-Bandar, Chief Judge of Revolutionary Court: found guilty and sentenced to death
Before the sentencing session began, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was ejected from the courtroom after handing the judge a note in which he called the trial a "travesty".
The first judge assigned to preside over the case, Rizgar Amin, resigned after complaining of government interference and three defence lawyers were assassinated.
Dulaimi, who was among the lawyers who met Saddam, said that the convicted former Iraqi leader urged the Iraqi people during the meeting to unite their ranks, free Iraq of foreign occupation and "avoid any act of vengeance".
