The number of Iraqi civilians killed in political violence hit an all-time high in December, according to official government figures.

The figure of 1,930 for the month is up from 548 in January, before a huge increase in violence following the destruction of a major Shia shrine in February.

The Interior Ministry figures showed a total of 12,320 civilian deaths in what officials called “terrorist violence” in 2006.

The figures are seen as an important, if partial, indicator of levels of violence in Iraq.

All casualty figures for the country have been disputed. A figure of 3,700 civilian deaths in October, the latest tally given by the United Nations based on data from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, was branded exaggerated by the Iraqi government. (more…)

The Iraqi government Monday ordered the closure of the Baghdad office of a Dubai-based television station whose newscaster wore black mourning clothes while reporting on the hanging of Hussein.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said the Al-Sharqiya station, owned by a former chief of radio and television for Saddam, had incited violence and hatred in its coverage and had ignored warnings to stop.

Brigadier Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman, said the order was issued after an allegedly false report by the news channel about the abduction of three Sunni Arab female students from a university.

But the order also followed criticism of the tone of Al-Sharqiya’s coverage of Saturday’s execution, which struck some as sympathetic to the ousted dictator.

In contrast to state-run television reports that described Saddam as a “tyrant” and “criminal,” a newscaster on Al-Sharqiya - which means “The Eastern One” - referred to him Sunday as “president.” (more…)

NEW YORK — Small groups of Americans opposed to the Iraq war and the death penalty decried Saddam Hussein’s execution, and the centre headed by one of the former dictator’s lawyers said the hanging was part of a plan by President George Bush to escalate the war.

The small rallies on Saturday in New York’s Times Square and in Boston, led by a group affiliated with former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, were among several condemnations of Saddam’s hanging.

Activists in Detroit also planned their own demonstration. Clark, who leads the New York-based International Action Center and was one of Saddam’s defence lawyers, predicted during the Iraqi leader’s trial that a bloodbath would follow if he was executed.
In a statement, the center said his hanging was part of a plan by Bush to escalate the war. (more…)

The Iraqi government has launched an inquiry into unofficial mobile phone footage showing the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
The mobile phone footage showed he exchanged taunts and insults with witnesses at his hanging on Saturday.

The grainy video showed the former leader being told to “go to hell” by someone attending the hanging.

One of the trial prosecutors who saw the execution said he threatened to halt it if the jeering did not stop.

Munkith al-Faroon - who can be heard appealing for order on the unofficial video - said that he had threatened to walk out.

This could have halted the execution, as a prosecution observer must, by law, be present. (more…)

With his plain pine coffin strapped into an American military helicopter for a predawn journey across the desert, Saddam Hussein, the executed dictator who built a legend with his defiance of America, completed a turbulent passage into history on Sunday.

Like the helicopter trip, just about everything in the 24 hours that began with Mr. Hussein’s being taken to his execution from his cell in an American military detention center in the postmidnight chill of Saturday had a surreal and even cinematic quality.

Part of it was that the Americans, who turned him into a pariah and drove him from power, proved to be his unlikely benefactors in the face of Iraq’s new Shiite rulers who seemed bent on turning the execution and its aftermath into a new nightmare for the Sunni minority privileged under Mr. Hussein.

The 110-mile journey aboard a Black Hawk helicopter carried Mr. Hussein’s body to an American military base north of Tikrit, Camp Speicher, named for an American Navy pilot lost over Iraq in the first hours of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. From there, an Iraqi convoy carried him to Awja, the humble town beside the Tigris River that Mr. Hussein, in the chandeliered palaces that became his habitat as ruler, spoke of as emblematic of the miseries of his lonely and impoverished youth. (more…)

Hundreds of supporters of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein have been protesting in the cities of Baghdad, Tikrit and Samarra against his hanging.

Many of the protesters vowed revenge for Saturday’s execution, describing it as a criminal act of cowardice orchestrated by American overlords.

The Sunni Arab demonstrations came a day after celebrations in Shia areas.

Saddam Hussein’s eldest daughter, Raghad, joined hundreds of people in a protest in Jordan’s capital Amman.

“God bless you! I thank your for honouring Saddam the martyr,” she told the demonstrators, in a surprise public appearance.

The former president’s two older daughters sought refuge in Jordan four months after the US-led invasion in April 2003.

Further protests were reported around the Muslim world, including in the Palestinian territories and Indian-administered Kashmir. (more…)

Ending the occupation will reduce violence, immediately save more than $100 billion and respect the wishes of the American people. Why is Washington, DC ignoring the obvious?

If the election results did not make the message clear, polls since the election have done so. Support for sending additional troops to Iraq is at 11% according a December 15-17 poll by CNN. The same poll found that 54% of Americans want the troops home by the end of 2007 and 67% oppose the war. Yet in the Capitol there is talk of adding new troops and almost no talk of getting out of Iraq. Representative government is failing to represent the voters.

Why is the leadership of both parties in Washington, DC failing to discuss getting out of Iraq—rapidly? They say a U.S. exit will lead to an escalation of violence, a blood bath or civil war. But the truth is we can design a rapid exit from Iraq that reduces the risk of violence. How? (more…)

Here is the link to the execution video. BE WARNED, IT SHOWS THE FULL AND GRAPHIC EXECUTION

“The tyrant has fallen,” a witness shouted after Saddam Hussein dropped through the trap door of the gallows, his neck broken in an instant by the rope moments after exchanging sectarian taunts with onlookers.

Grainy footage of the execution, apparently shot on a mobile phone by a witness who was standing below looking up at the gallows, was circulating widely on the Internet on Sunday, a day after Saddam was hanged for crimes against humanity.

As the hangmen prepare him for his final moment, some of those invited to attend standing below the platform taunted the former president, who was executed on Saturday before dawn. (more…)

John Scarlett, who took responsibility for the error-ridden dossier that justified the war in Iraq, is knighted in today’s New Year’s Honours list. The award will enrage peace campaigners, who have accused the veteran spymaster of saving Tony Blair’s skin over the flawed case for the invasion.

The news came as a British soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Basra yesterday, the 127th to die since the invasion in 2003.

Sir John, the head of MI6, played a key role in the Hutton Inquiry hearings into the death of the weapons expert David Kelly, three years ago. He steadfastly defended the dossier, which contained the notorious claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. And he dismissed accusations he had bowed to pressure to “sex up” the document’s conclusions.

As chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, he told the inquiry he had “overall charge and responsibility” for the dossier.

Sir John allowed last-minute changes that had the effect of strengthening its conclusions, leading Lord Hutton to suggest that he could have been “subconsciously influenced” by his political masters. (more…)

Tony Blair is today accused of “disgraceful hand-washing” in Iraq by a former British Army chief, the latest attack on the Government by an increasingly outspoken military.

General Sir Michael Rose, the former commander of British troops in Bosnia, accuses the Prime Minister of putting British soldiers at “considerable and quite unnecessary risk” in Iraq, in an article for today’s Independent on Sunday.

His remarks follow those of the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, and of the Army’s commander in Iraq, Major General Richard Shirreff.

Maj-Gen Shirreff said on Wednesday that a “generation of underfunding and neglect in political terms” was undermining soldiers’ capacity to protect themselves. His remarks follow those of General Dannatt’s pledge to “stand up for what is right” for the troops.

In his article, Sir Michael says it is “tremendously heartening” for soldiers to see their “present bosses standing up for them”. (more…)

London- Human rights organization Amnesty International said Sunday in London that it “deplores” the execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. “”We oppose the death penalty in all cases as a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, but it is especially abhorrent when this most extreme penalty is imposed after an unfair trial,” Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa programme, said in a statement.

“It is even more worrying that in this case, the execution appeared a foregone conclusion, once the original verdict was pronounced, with the Appeals Court providing little more than a veneer of legitimacy for what was, in fact, a fundamentally flawed process,” Smart said.

The statement pointed out that Amnesty had always campaigned for Saddam to be brought to justice for crimes against humanity. Unfortunately, the trial the former dictator faced was “a deeply flawed affair.”

“It will be seen by many as nothing more than ‘victor’s justice’ and, sadly, will do nothing to stem the unrelenting tide of political killings,” Smart said. (more…)

Thousands of Iraqis flocked to Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Ouja on Sunday, where the deposed leader was buried in a religious compound 24 hours after his execution.

Dozens of relatives and other mourners, some of them crying and moaning, attended the interment shortly before dawn near Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. A few knelt before his flag-draped grave. A large framed photograph of Saddam was propped up on a chair nearby.

“I condemn the way he was executed and I consider it a crime,” said 45-year-old Salam Hassan al-Nasseri, one of Saddam’s clansmen who attended the interment. (more…)

Tehran — Iran on Saturday termed the execution of Saddam Hussein as a “victory for the Iraqi people”, state news agency IRNA reported.

“The execution of Saddam Hussein was a victory for the Iraqi people and no other country should take credit for that,” Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid-Reza told IRNA in a first reaction by Tehran to the execution.

Assefi however criticised the swift execution and speculated that the United States preferred to avoid disclosure of more details in the court hearings. (more…)

Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn on Saturday for crimes against humanity, a dramatic, violent end for a leader who brutally ruled Iraq for three decades before he was toppled by a U.S. invasion in 2003.

In what looked like a swift response by Sunni insurgents loyal to Saddam, a car bomb killed 36 people in a Shi’ite town — the sort of sectarian attack that has pitched Iraq towards civil war since U.S. troops broke Saddam’s iron grip.

State television showed him looking composed and talking with the masked hangman who placed the noose around his neck on the gallows.

A Shi’ite-run channel aired grainy, low-quality film of the body in a white shroud, showing Saddam, who was 69, lying with his neck twisted at an awkward angle, with what appeared to be blood or a bruise on his left cheek.

“It was very quick. He died right away,” one of the official Iraqi witnesses told Reuters, saying the ousted president, who was bound but wore no blindfold, had said a brief prayer. (more…)

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqis awoke Saturday to television images of a noose being slipped over
Saddam Hussein’s neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen. They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope.

In Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country.

There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare was not far off the daily average — 92 from bombings and death squads.

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and gunmen paraded and fired into the air in support of Saddam in Tikrit, his hometown.

Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Saddam was sentenced to death Nov. 5. (more…)