Saddam may go to the gallows within months

BAGHDAD: The procedure through which ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein will appeal against his death sentence began on Monday, with officials saying he may face the gallows within the next few months.   

On Sunday the 69-year-old was sentenced to hang for committing crimes against humanity by ordering the deaths of 148 Shiites from the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after a 1982 assassination attempt against him.   

His half-brother and intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti was also sentenced to death, as was Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, who was chairman of the so-called Revolutionary Court that ordered the Shiites executed.   

Saddam's former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan received a life sentence, while three Baath party officials from Dujail received 15 years each and a fourth, more junior figure, was cleared.   

Under Iraqi law, Saddam, Barzan, Bandar and Ramadan have an automatic right to appeal against their death and life sentences and the process began on Monday.   

A US official close to the court said that the defendants can file their appeals over the next 30 days.   

"From now to the next 10 days, the trial chamber can hold the file (ruling). But in these 10 days it has to forward the file to the appeal chamber," the official said.    

He said that on receipt of the file, the appeal chamber has to immediately forward it to the prosecutor's chamber.   

"The prosecutor gets 20 days to present his views on the file after which he gives the file back to the appeal chamber which then starts deliberating on it," the US official said.   

"There is no set period for the appeal chamber's deliberations but after the appeal chamber's decision is final, and if it upholds the trial chamber's rulings, the sentence has to be carried out in 30 days."   

Saddam's lead Iraqi lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said his team was determined to appeal the "political" verdict issued by the Iraqi court, although it believes nothing will be gained.   

"My experience with this court shows that there is no benefit to gain from appealing because this court is political, nevertheless we will appeal," Dulaimi said.   

"The court refused to look at the arguments which we submitted yesterday and this shows that it is 100-percent political," Dulaimi said.   

Charging that the court was run by "American militias", he said the tribunal's decision were "not legal but political and there must be a political decision to confront them."   

"We have knocked on all the doors but we have not been successful because the court is working on behalf of regional and local interests," Dulaimi added.   

Raed Juhi, the investigative judge at the Iraqi High Tribunal, confirmed the legal process for an appeal, and said that the panel would disregard a Saddam-era law which placed a time limit on appeal deliberations.   

"The tribunal's law has no such ceiling," he said.   

Chief prosecutor of the tribunal Jaafar al-Musawi told AFP that the appeal chamber's decision could be expected in January or February.   

"My expectation is that after the appeal period, lets give one or two months to the chamber to deliberate on the appeals," Musawi said.   

"Considering that the appeal period ends on December 5, I expect the chamber's decision to come in one or two months."   

The US official further explained that if the appeal chamber upholds a death sentence, it goes to the three-member presidency council for its approval.   

President Jalal Talabani is personally opposed to the death penalty, but in previous capital cases he has allowed his deputies to rubber stamp execution orders in his absence.   

Some Iraqi officials, meanwhile, hoped that the former military strongman is quickly "put to an end".   

"We strongly feel that every day he lives is not good for the Iraqi people," said Bassam Ridha, a top aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.   

"We need to put an end to him ... to this dictator. I hope this issue comes to an end quickly," he said, adding that he was speaking on his own behalf.   

Ridha hoped that Saddam could be hanged in the coming months: "I hope before the next summer, he is dead."