Reports: Saddam executed in Baghdad

12/29/2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein has been hanged, state-run television reported today. "Criminal Saddam was hanged to death," state-run Iraqiya television said in an announcement. The station played patriotic music and showed images of national monuments and other landmarks.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction to interfere in another country's judicial process. The ruling can be appealed, but it was issued within an hour of the time Iraqi officials said they expected the execution to be carried out.

Saddam and others were convicted of murder in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from an Iraqi town where assassins tried to kill Saddam in 1982.

Also to be hanged were Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, the adviser said.

Read more in later editions of The Blade and toledoblade.com.