Security high as hundreds pay homage on Hussein’s anniversary

IRAQI security forces were on high alert yesterday around Baghdad and in the Sunni heartland north of the capital as the country marked the one-year anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s execution.

Iraq’s Brigadier General Qassim al-Moussawi said security forces were “ready and prepared for any emergencies that might happen”.

In Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, hundreds of people visited his burial site to pay homage and lay flowers. Some gave fiery speeches while others just stood quietly by the tomb, located in a large mausoleum in the Tigris River village of Ouja — the small hamlet just outside Tikrit where Saddam was born.

The tomb was covered in Iraqi flags and flowers and flanked by large pictures of a smiling Hussein.

Hussein is buried next to his sons Odai and Qusai, who died in a gun battle with US forces in 2003 in the northern city of Mosul.

Footage of Hussein’s December 30 execution, filmed on a mobile phone and showing the former Iraqi leader being taunted just before he was hanged, was leaked to the media and shown across the world. It provoked outcry, particularly among many of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, and sparked an horrific day of violence that left 80 people dead from bombings and other attacks.

Iraq then plunged into its bloodiest cycle of violence since the US-led invasion in 2003. The violence forced them to rethink their strategy and about 30,000 more troops were added. Jamal Salman, a Sunni in Baghdad, said “we had wished Saddam’s death would be part of the solution but it became part of a problem”.

Hussein was executed after being convicted on charges of killing 148 Shi’ite men and boys in Dujail, north of Baghdad, after a botched assassination attempt in 1982.

Sunnis were not only outraged Hussein was put to death on the day they began celebrations for Eid al-Adha, a major Muslim festival, but many also were incensed by the scene in the execution chamber, in which he was taunted with chants of “Muqtada, Muqtada”

The chants referred to Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric who leads the Mahdi Army militia. But a year later, al-Sadr’s decision to declare a ceasefire, the influx of US troops and a decision by tens of thousands of predominantly Sunni tribesmen to back America instead of al-Qaida has turned the tide. Violence in the past six months has dropped 60%, the US military has said.

A leaflet scattered in the Sunni Baghdad neighbourhood of Azamiyah and issued in the name of the outlawed Baath party said yesterday marked “the first anniversary of the remembrance of the crime of Hussein’s assassination committed by the Americans and the Iranian agents they have collaborated with to carry out a fake trial.”

In a predominantly Shi’ite area in east Baghdad, people want to forget Hussein. “We hoped after his death matters would be better, but the result was the opposite,” said Najim Jamal. A Shi’ite, Mr Jamal said violence got worse after Hussein’s death before getting better.