World Reacts To Saddam Verdict

In a world sharply divided on Iraq since the U.S.-led war began in 2003, Saddam Hussein's death sentence Sunday unleashed fears of fresh violence and new questions about the fairness and impartiality of the tribunal that ordered him to hang.

Underscoring the fault lines that split the international community and widened the divide between Muslims and Christians, Islamic leaders warned that the verdict could inflame those who revile the United States — undermining U.S. policy in the volatile Middle East and inspiring terrorists to strike.

"The hanging of Saddam Hussein will turn to hell for the Americans," said Vitaya Wisethrat, a respected Muslim cleric in Thailand, where a bloody Islamic insurgency is raging in the country's south.

"The Saddam case is not a Muslim problem but the problem of America and its domestic politics," he said. "The Americans are about to vote in a midterm election, so maybe Bush will use this case to tell the voters that Saddam is dead and that the Americans are safe. But actually the American people will be in more danger with the death of Saddam."

Iranians are praising the death sentence against ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The verdict was announced across Iran by the country's state-run television, which interrupted regular programming to give the word. One parliamentary spokesman called Saddam a "vampire" and the verdict "a matter of happiness."

For many Iranians, memories remain of destruction suffered after Saddam invaded their country in 1980, launching a deadly war that would last eight years.

"I am happy that finally he got what he deserved," said Ahmad Gharakhani, who lost a leg in the Iran-Iraq war.

But Robab Safdarzadeh, 65, said Saddam's verdict and sentencing will not reverse the past. "The death of Saddam will not bring our dead children to life," she said.

Iranian leaders hailed the death sentence and said it hoped that Saddam — denounced by one lawmaker as "a vampire" — still would be tried for other crimes. Meanwhile, one Iranian political commentator is linking today's verdict to U.S. politics and the upcoming midterm elections; he says Saddam's death sentence will be helpful for Republicans.

In Kuwait, the tiny emirate that Saddam occupied from August 1990 to February 1991, many were jubilant.

"This is justice from heaven. He should have been hanged a long time ago. This is the smallest punishment for someone who executed tens of thousands of people," said Abdul-Ridha Aseeri, who heads the political science department at Kuwait University.

Kholoud al-Feeli, 40, a Kuwaiti communications specialist, said death was too good for the former dictator.

"Death to him is merciful," she said. "I wanted life in prison. He will die but people (he hurt) will continue to suffer."

Reaction was mixed across the Arab world. Some Muslims saw the sentence as divine justice, but others denounced it as a farce, maintaining that Iraq is more violent now than it was under Saddam.

"If Saddam is condemned to death, then they must make it fair and sentence Mr. Bush to death ... and they should send Israel's Ehud Olmert to death, too, because of what he did in Lebanon," said Ibrahim Hreish, a jeweler in Amman, Jordan.

Key U.S. allies welcomed Sunday's verdict, which had been widely expected, and said Saddam got what he deserved for crimes against humanity committed during years of brutal dictatorship.

"I welcome that Saddam Hussein and the other defendants have faced justice and have been held to account for their crimes," British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said in a statement. "Appalling crimes were committed by Saddam Hussein's regime. It is right that those accused of such crimes against the Iraqi people should face Iraqi justice."

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt called the verdict "deeply satisfying," despite the EU's distaste for capital punishment, but stressed that it won't solve Iraq's problems.

Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, called Saddam "an evil tyrant" and said the death sentence — which will be subject to an automatic appeal before he can be hanged — came as no surprise.

But Amnesty International questioned the fairness of the trial, and international legal experts said Saddam should be kept alive long enough to answer for other atrocities. Only then, they said, will Iraqis brutalized by years of his despotic rule see true justice done.

"This was an opportunity to turn the page in Iraq, after thirty years when unfair trials were the norm — if there were any trials at all this was a chance to set the tone for the future of Iraq," Malcolm Smart Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Program told CBS's Sunday Morning. "And it's failed miserably because of inadequate planning, inadequate attention to the basic human rights needs of a fair trial."

Sonya Sceats, an international law expert at the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank in London, said that postponing Saddam's execution will allow the tribunal to find out about other crimes the former dictator is said to have committed. She also said that the tribunal "has not shown itself to be fair and impartial — not only by international standards, but by Iraqi standards."

"There is significant evidence of political pressure," she said.

Chandra Muzaffar, president of the Malaysian-based International Movement for a Just World, also voiced concerns that Saddam's trial was flawed because it "violated many established norms of international jurisprudence, such as in the way the court was constituted and how the charges were brought against Saddam."

"But Saddam was undoubtedly a brutal dictator, and even though I wouldn't subscribe to the death penalty, he deserves to be punished severely for the enormity of his crimes," said Chandra, a well-known Muslim social commentator.

Chandra said there was bound to be a violent reaction in Iraq to the verdict.

"We would expect a reaction from the resistance in Iraq, whether it is immediate or not, in the form of suicide bombings or other violence," he said.

Vatican and Roman Catholic officials said on Sunday that Hussein should not be put to death even if he has committed crimes against humanity because every life is sacred.

Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, said that carrying out the death sentence by hanging would be an unjustifiably vindictive action.

"For me, punishing a crime with another crime — which is what killing for vindication is — would mean that we are still at the point of demanding an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," he was quoted as saying by Italian news agency Ansa.

In Russia, the Kremlin-allied head of the international affairs committee in the State Duma, or lower house of parliament, told Ekho Moskvy radio the sentence will deepen divisions in Iraq.

But the official, Konstantin Kosachyov, said he doubted that Saddam would actually be executed.

"A death sentence will apparently split Iraqi society even further," Kosachyov said. "On the other hand, it seems to me that the death sentence against Saddam Hussein will probably not be carried out. It will be stopped one way or another, either by the president of Iraq or by other means. It is most of all a moral decision — retribution that modern Iraq is taking against Saddam's regime."

In Pakistan, the opposition religious coalition claimed that American forces have caused more deaths in Iraq during the past 3 1/2 years than Saddam during his 23-year reign, and insisted President Bush should stand trial for war crimes.

"Who will punish the Americans and their lackeys who have killed many more people than Saddam Hussein?" asked Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a senior lawmaker from the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition, which is critical of Pakistan's military cooperation with the United States.

"What goes around comes around. ... in the future, Bush must face the same fate," Ahmed said.

Some saw the verdict as intentionally timed to coincide with Tuesday's pivotal midterm elections in the U.S. Congress, where Democrats are fighting to regain control.

"The Bush administration, which has lost the trust of the American people, needs some sort of victory," said Abbas Khalaf, Iraq's ambassador to Russia during the Saddam era, denouncing the proceedings as "a purely political trial."

Associated Press correspondents worldwide contributed to this story.