Al Jazeera reports
Khalil al- Dulaimi, Saddam's defence lawyer, told Reuters: "The Americans have notified us that they have handed over the president to the Iraqi authorities.
"They told us the president is no longer under the authority of the American forces and they requested us not to go to Baghdad," he said.
Americans could have stopped the rush to execution if they had intended to have a full and fair trial to investigate the genocide of the Kurds. Clearly, this is not the intent of the Bush administration.
Najib al-Nuaimi, another defence lawyer, had earlier told Al Jazeera that he believed that the toppled president would be executed on Saturday. "Saddam should die for the way in which he ruled his country and oppressed his people. The Americans called the defence team to pick up his personal belongings," al-Nuaimi said. "All these indications show he will probably be executed tomorrow morning, on the first day of Eid," the former Qatar justice minister said.
Meanwhile an AP report, quoting an unnamed Iraqi official, said that Saddam could be executed before 6am Baghdad time (03 GMT) on Saturday.
Sunnis celebrate Eid on December 30, but Shiites celebrate it later. It's a major 4 day holiday. It is against Iraqi law to execute a person on a religious holiday they celebrate so Saddam must be hung before sunrise.
Well, why can't they wait? Here's a clue from the Tehran Times
Saddam is still on trial with six others for genocide against ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s. Shahin said the trial would continue without Saddam if he is executed.
Saddam is scheduled to appear in court again on Jan.8.
The Bush Administration wants Saddam dead before the Kurdish war crimes trial begins.
Norm Dixon wrote:
One of the more comprehensive and damning accounts of Iraqgate was written by Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas and published in the February 23, 1992, Los Angeles Times. Headlined, "Bush secret effort helped Iraq build its war machine", the article reported that "classified documents obtained by the LA Times show ... a long-secret pattern of personal efforts by [George Bush senior] — both as president and vice president — to support and placate the Iraqi dictator."
With Saddam dead, the complicity of Bush Senior with Saddam's regime can be covered up. Dixon wrote in 2002:
On August 18, the New York Times carried a front-page story headlined, "Officers say U.S. aided Iraq despite the use of gas". Quoting anonymous US "senior military officers", the NYT "revealed" that in the 1980s, the administration of US President Ronald Reagan covertly provided "critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war". The story made a brief splash in the international media, then died.
While the August 18 NYT article added new details about the extent of US military collaboration with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran, it omitted the most outrageous aspect of the scandal: not only did Washington turn a blind-eye to the Hussein regime's repeated use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and Iraq's Kurdish minority, but the US helped Iraq develop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
The whole neocon cabal behind Bush will escape the sure exposure of their guilt in providing Saddam with the weaponry used in the genocide against the Kurds. That's why Saddam must die.