Saddam Ready To Die

(Via Times Online)

THE former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has resigned himself to being sent to the gallows. “I am ready to die,” he told his lawyer and confidante in an interview in his Baghdad prison. “I am not scared of execution.”

Saddam is expected to return to court tomorrow for the resumption of a chaotic trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity that has lasted almost seven months.

“I do not attend this trial to spare my life,” he said. “I attend it to defend Iraq.”

Saddam, who refuses all visits from his family, was talking to Bushra Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer in her forties who is now the only woman he meets. In their meetings Saddam often prefers to talk to her about poetry or international relations rather than the minutiae of the defence case.

Khalil told The Sunday Times of an intimate five-hour interview conducted with Saddam in his prison within the past few weeks.

He confided that he had no fear of death and seemed to have accepted his fate. “I took the decision to die the day I tried to assassinate Abdel Karim Qasim,” he said, referring to a botched coup against a former leader that forced him to flee the country in 1959. In Iraq, hanging is the customary form of capital punishment.

Well, it looks like Saddam and I have something in common after all! He's ready to die and I'm ready for him to be dead.

I do find it ironic that he accepted death as his fate the day of the failed assassination attempt on Abdel Karim Qasim and he faced it by fleeing Iraq.

I suppose since fleeing now will only take him as far as a set of steel bars or a concrete wall, he can now put on a brave face. How courageous!

It's not like he has a lot of choice in the matter now!

Tags: Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Politics, Execution, Hanging