Coming at a suspiciously convenient time for Republicans, deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was found guilty of �crimes against humanity�, receiving a sentence of death by hanging. Saddam�s half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of the former Revolutionary Court, were also sentenced to death at the gallows. Taha Yassin Ramadan, former Iraqi Vice President, received life in prison and three other co-defendants received as much as 15 years imprisonment.

Those who feared the verdict might intensify sectarian violence were unfortunately correct. One such altercation broke out immediately in north Baghdad’s heavily Sunni Azamiyah district. Police there battled militants with machine guns as at least seven mortar shells erupted near the Abu Hanifa mosque.

The sentences apply only to the massacre of 148 Shiites in Dujail in 1982 (when Hussein was a close ally of the Reagan Administration). Previous to the massacre, an unsuccessful assassination attempt was carried out against Saddam by the Shiite Dawa Party. The party was strongly opposed to the Iran-Iraq War being waged at the time with the support and encouragement of the US. Hussein managed to live through the three hour gunfight launched against his motorcade, and ordered a reprisal attack on the entire town. Around 1,500 were incarcerated and tortured. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland were destroyed, as was the town itself before it was shortly rebuilt by Saddam�s regime.

President Bush called the verdict “a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.” On a campaign tour for Republican candidates to win swing votes just two days before congressional elections, Bush continued, “The man who once struck fear in the hearts of Iraqis had to listen to free Iraqis recount the acts of torture and murder that he ordered against their families and against them.”

The president called the verdict a �major achievement for Iraq’s young democracy� despite the fact that Iraq is currently a police-state under a strict military curfew. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said the verdict was welcome news, but that the Iraqis “have traded a dictator for chaos” as their country has been destroyed by civil war since the US-led invasion.

One of Saddam’s lawyers, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, said earlier that the way Saddam’s trial was perceived would set important precedents in Iraq. “And unless it is seen as absolutely fair and is absolutely fair in fact, it will irreconcilably divide the people of Iraq.” Hussein could face more charges in relation to Kurdish slayings.

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