Adnan Becomes Another Silent Statistic in Death List AP Photo SAR104
(APW_ENG_19950719.0789)
1) Adnan Hadzic, a 13-year-old soccer enthusiast, returned from Germany to the Bosnian capital two months ago so his sister could go to college.
2) His short life ended Wednesday. Another victim of a random Serb mortar attack which sprayed deadly shrapnel into the family bathroom where Adnan was standing. Another silent statistic.
3) ``I was ready to be killed myself. I didn't expect it to happen to my son,'' said Adnan's father Amir, a Bosnian army soldier, too numb with grief to cry.
4) Children die daily in the Bosnian capital but there have been no recent large-scale massacres to bring down the wrath of the international community on the Serbs. Just sporadic shelling, which spreads even more fear because noone knows when or where the next attack will be.
5) Many deaths are not recorded by the United Nations, which concentrates on the size of mortars and the number of firing incidents rather than the victims.
6) ``Sarajevo is quiet,'' said Lt. Col. Gerard Dubois, a U.N. military spokesman, just a few hours after Adnan was killed. Four people were killed Wednesday, including two children, and 21 were wounded, said Bosnian radio. Six were reported killed Tuesday.
7) Adnan was fetching water from a water standpipe when the first mortar shell hit the residential street in central Sarajevo.
8) ``I called out to him, and he shouted back that he would go into the basement,'' his sister Arna recalled. He stopped by at the bathroom on the way.
9) Then the second shell struck, exploding in front of the Hadzic family's small house. A piece of shrapnel hit Adnan in the back of the head.
10) ``I called him again. He didn't reply. I rushed to the bathroom. he still didn't reply. I tried to pick him up. There was no sign of life ... just blood everywhere,'' said 20-year-old Arna, pulling on a thin cigarette and still in shock.
11) Glass littered the ground in front of the family home, crowded with mourners. A line of clothes hung forlornly above a wrecked car nearby.
12) Adnan's mother was at work at a nearby clothes factory when the attack happened. His father was out on the daily chore of looking for basic supplies.
13) A neighbor stopped the passing vehicle of Associated Press Television _ journalists' cars are frequently used to ferry wounded to hospital. But it was too late for doctors to save the boy.
14) Adnan and Arna left Sarajevo in April 1992 when the war first started. They stayed for three years with an uncle in Germany. Adnan soon became a star in a local children's soccer team and his room was covered with trophies and flags of the sport he loved.
15) ``But then I finished grammar school (high school) and couldn't continue with my studies in Germany so we came back to Sarajevo to see if I could study here,'' said Arna. They returned home in May, not expecting the upsurge of Serb shelling that has once again imperilled the capital.
16) Adnan went to school just twice before it was closed because government authorities feared large groups of children were too easy targets for enemy attack.
17) Still, Adnan managed to play soccer with other local children on a patch of weeds just opposite his home.
18) ``He didn't seem worried about the shelling. He was a fun-loving kid,'' said his father Amir.
19) ``What happened had to happen. And now it's too late.'' (cn/gj)
Syrian fighter knocked out by Malaysian in fight for bronze medal Eds: UPDATES with Malaysian disqualified; CORRECTS spelling of
(APW_ENG_19981217.0526)
1) Syria's Adnan Laoundi was carried off the mat on a stretcher after taking a hard blow to the neck from Malaysia's Puvanesuaran Ramasamy in an Asian Games karate bout Thursday.
2) Ramasamy, who was leading 3-1 at the time, was disqualified, and Adnan received a bronze in the 60-kilogram weight class.
3) Adnan hit the canvas hard, the referee stopped the match immediately and medical personnel rushed to the mat.
4) Adnan initially appeared to be having trouble breathing but was not hospitalized. (dp)
After decades of fear, Iraqis revel in their greatest new freedom _ speech
(APW_ENG_20030419.0422)
1) The entire neighborhood was ordered out onto the street. Militiamen with machine guns stood guard on surrounding rooftops. Commandos brought out the young man, hands bound behind him. His parents gasped.
2) Quietly, the crowd began to chant ``Allahu akbar'' _ God is great. It was all they could say as a militiaman pulled out a box cutter and sliced off part of Firaz Adnan's tongue. His crime: He had cursed Saddam Hussein and his family.
3) It was March 5 _ two weeks before the start of the war.
4) ``There was no justice. There was no law,'' the 23-year-old Adnan mumbled Friday, his voice slurred by his deformed tongue.
5) Since American troops drove Saddam's government from power, Iraq has been in the midst of a chaotic, violent and confused transformation. But for many, the most monumental change has already come: For the first time in many people's lives, they are free to speak their minds.
6) ``In the past we couldn't talk about anything. Now we can talk about everything,'' said Raad Abdul Hamid, a 36-year-old taxi driver.
7) Hamid sat on a plastic chair in front of a lawyer's office, basking in the sun and chatting with a few friends. The old friends can talk all day. Suddenly, their discussions are fascinating.
8) ``The regime was fascist!'' proclaimed one, Abdul Razak Abbas, 50.
9) ``I didn't know you thought that,'' said Abdul Muteleb Mohammed, 42. Then he corrected himself: ``Everyone thought that. They just didn't say it in public.''
10) The group even felt free enough to criticize those who made their discussion possible _ the American and British troops now in the midst.
11) ``The Americans came as liberators, but we have seen no liberation,'' Hamid said. ``We will be free when the Americans leave.''
12) The transformation of a society of silence into a culture of chatter has been so sudden that some people haven't registered it. As a journalist interviewed some teenagers about newfound freedoms, their mother hissed from the house: ``Just tell him everything is normal.''
13) Her fear is understandable. Only a month ago, as Adnan and thousands more can attest, speaking openly was a crime punishable with jail, torture or death.
14) Yedullah Jani, a Kurdish ironworker who lives in Baghdad, was arrested in 1982 for talking with members of the Kurdish opposition in northern Iraq. Three or four times a day, he was pulled from his prison cell and told to confess to opposition activities.
15) ``They would handcuff me and hang me by the hands from a hook on the roof. They used electric shocks and pulled off my toenails,'' he said, taking off a sock to reveal a hobbled foot.
16) Jani finally confessed and was sentenced to life in prison. He was released after four years under a blanket presidential pardon granted during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.
17) ``For two years my wife didn't know where I was,'' he said. ``We were living in fear and terror. Nobody could say anything.''
18) People knew government spies could be anywhere.
19) ``Even the man who sells cigarettes in the street could be secret police, even a taxi driver,'' said Thamer Arhaim, 27, himself a taxi driver.
20) As that fear dims and Iraqis open up to one another, many say they are forging deep friendships with people they have known all their lives _ but never really spoke to.
21) Zaki Ghazi, a 46-year-old accountant, kept his views to himself. He hated Saddam's government with a passion, but he didn't dare tell anyone.
22) ``I was afraid of my neighbor. Some people were afraid of their own son or wife,'' he said. ``Many times, wives put their husbands in jail.''
23) Last week Ghazi paid a few visits to his neighbors and gingerly explored their political views. He was shocked to hear they felt exactly the same.
24) ``I talked to them and I agreed with them,'' he said with a laugh. ``They say now what I thought before.''
25) Even people with dark secrets are beginning to talk about them. Saddam Khaled Hassan, 28, revealed one at the barber shop.
26) He confessed he went partying several times last year with the president's son Odai _ the relative of a friend _ on some of his notorious evenings of drugs, alcohol and women.
27) Until last week, he hadn't told a soul.
28) ``I didn't tell anyone, not even my family,'' he said. ``I am still ashamed to tell my family, but I am telling my friends now. I was afraid to talk to them out of fear they could be (ruling) party members.''
29) Hassan said his friends have reprimanded him and called him immoral, but it still feels good to get it off his chest.
30) His barber, 35-year-old Zeid Kalaf, said life has gotten more interesting in his shop. Customers used to limit their chatter to pleasantries about the weather. Now the weather hardly comes up.
31) ``People talk about the new regime. Will it be like Saddam's regime? An American regime? Or will the Americans bring their Iraqi agents to rule us?'' he said. ``People who were afraid to speak now talk about injustice, about suffering. Most people talk about that.''
32) Adnan, too, is now free to speak about his ordeal, but he must do it in a voice forever distorted by the stump that was his tongue.
33) Interviewed in his home in the Huriya neighborhood _ its name means ``freedom'' _ he said he got into an argument outside his house Dec. 31. A member of Odai's Fedayeen militia intervened, and their discussion got heated.
34) ``He said, `Be careful what you say, because I work for Odai,''' Adnan said. ``I said, `God curse Odai _ and his father and mother.'''
35) For 10 days, Adnan stayed in hiding. He returned home when he believed tempers had cooled, but they hadn't. Militiamen arrested him, along with an uncle and two cousins, and took them all to a security office.
36) ``They tortured me with electricity on my feet and ears. They beat me with cables on my back,'' Adnan said. ``Then they took me back to my neighborhood for the operation.''
37) His father, Adnan Suleyman, 47, watched as the militiamen mutilated his son's tongue, but couldn't say a word.
38) ``I was standing there but I couldn't interfere. I was surrounded by machine guns,'' he said. ``I went home and started to curse Saddam Hussein. I asked God for revenge.''
39) The family is still searching for the militiamen, and Suleyman said he will shoot them when they find them. But Suleyman said part of the revenge has already been exacted.
40) ``My son cursed the regime,'' he said. ``And now it has fallen.'' _ _ _
41) EDITOR'S NOTE: Niko Price is correspondent at large for The Associated Press.
URGENT Saddam captured in hometown, officials say
(APW_ENG_20031214.0189)
1) American forces captured a bearded Saddam Hussein, hiding in a hole in a farmhouse cellar near his hometown of Tikrit, the U.S. military announced Sunday. The arrest was carried out without a shot fired and was a victory for the U.S.-led coalition eight months after the fall of Baghdad.
2) ``Ladies and gentlemen, we got him,'' U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said at a news conference, adding: ``The tyrant is a prisoner.''
3) Bremer said Saddam was captured Saturday at 8:30 p.m. in the town of Dour, 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of Tikrit, ending one of the most intense manhunts in history.
4) The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, who saw Saddam overnight, said the deposed leader ``has been cooperative and is talkative.'' He described Saddam as ``a tired man, a man resigned to his fate.''
5) In the capital, radio stations played celebratory music, residents fired small arms in the air in celebration and passengers on buses and trucks shouted, ``They got Saddam! They got Saddam!''
6) At the news conference announcing his capture, U.S. forces aired a video showing a bearded Saddam being examined by a doctor who held his mouth open with a tongue depressor, apparently to get a DNA sample. Then they showed a photograph of Saddam after he was shaved.
7) Iraqi journalists in the audience stood, pointed and shouted ``Death to Saddam!'' and ``Down with Saddam!''
8) The former Iraqi leader was being held at an undisclosed location, said the top U.S. soldier in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. He added that U.S. authorities had yet to determine whether to hand him over to a new Iraqi tribunal for trial.
9) ``This success brings closure to the Iraqi people,'' Sanchez said.
10) ``Saddam Hussein will never return to a position of power from which he can punish, terrorize, intimidate and exploit the Iraqi people as the did for more than 35 years.''
11) British Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomed the capture.
12) ``This is very good news for the people of Iraq. It removes the shadow that has been hanging over them for too long of the nightmare of a return to the Saddam regime,'' he said in a statement released by his office.
13) Forces from the 4th Infantry Division along with Special Forces captured Saddam, the U.S. military said. There were no shots fired or injuries in the raid, called ``Operation Red Dawn,'' Sanchez said.
14) Trapped in the cellar, Saddam was in a six-to-eight-foot-deep ``spider hole'' that had been camouflaged with bricks and dirt. The soldiers saw the hole, investigated and found him inside, Sanchez said.
15) The video showed an air vent and fan inside the hole to allow Saddam to remain hidden for an extended period.
16) Two men ``affiliated with Saddam Hussein'' were detained with him, and soldiers confiscated two Kalashnikov rifles, a pistol, a taxi and US$750,000 in $100 bills, Sanchez said.
17) Celebratory gunfire erupted in the capital, and shop owners closed their doors, fearful that the shooting would make the streets unsafe.
18) ``I'm very happy for the Iraqi people. Life is going to be safer now,'' said 35-year-old Yehya Hassan, a resident of Baghdad. ``Now we can start a new beginning.''
19) Earlier in the day, rumors of the capture sent people streaming into the streets of Kirkuk, a northern Iraqi city, firing guns in the air in celebration.
20) ``We are celebrating like it's a wedding,'' said Kirkuk resident Mustapha Sheriff. ``We are finally rid of that criminal.''
21) ``This is the joy of a lifetime,'' said Ali Al-Bashiri, another resident. ``I am speaking on behalf of all the people that suffered under his rule.''
22) In Tikrit, U.S. soldiers lit up cigars after hearing the news of Saddam's capture.
23) ``The intimidation and fear this man generated for over 30 years are now gone,'' said Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, who commands the division that carried out the raid.
24) Despite the celebration throughout Baghdad, many residents were skeptical.
25) ``I heard the news, but I'll believe it when I see it,'' said Mohaned al-Hasaji, 33. ``They need to show us that they really have him.'' Ayet Bassem, 24, walked out of a shop with her 6-year-old son.
26) ``Things will be better for my son,'' she said. ``Everyone says everything will be better when Saddam is caught. My son now has a future.''
27) From hiding, U.S. commanders have said Saddam played some role in the anti-U.S. resistance that has killed hundreds of soldiers and civilians in Iraq. In the latest attack, a suspected suicide bomber detonated explosives in a car outside a police station Sunday morning west of Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and wounding 33 more, the U.S. military said.
28) After invading Iraq on March 20 and setting up their headquarters in Saddam's sprawling Republican Palace compound in Baghdad, U.S. troops launched a massive manhunt for the fugitive leader, placing a US$25 million bounty on his head and sending thousands of soldiers to search for him.
29) Saddam was one of the most-wanted fugitives in the world, along with Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network who hasn't been caught despite a manhunt since November 2001, when the Taliban regime was overthrown in Afghanistan.
30) Saddam's sons Qusai and Odai _ each with a $15 million bounty on their heads _ were killed July 22 in a four-hour gunbattle with U.S. troops in a hideout in the northern city of Mosul. The bounties were paid out to the man who owned the house where they were killed, residents said.
31) Adnan Pachachi, member of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council, said Saddam's capture will bring stability to Iraq.
32) ``The state of fear, intelligence and oppression is gone forever,'' Pachachi said. ``The Iraqi people are very happy and we look forward to a future of national reconciliation between Iraqis in order to build the new and free Iraq, an Iraq of equality.''
U.S. forces capture Saddam in cramped hide-out, raising hopes insurgency might weaken
(APW_ENG_20031214.0502)
1) Cornered alone in a cramped hole near one of his sumptuous palaces, a weary, disheveled Saddam Hussein was seized by U.S. troops and displayed on television screens worldwide Sunday, a humiliating fate for one of history's most brutal dictators.
2) The man who waged and lost two wars against the United States and its allies was armed with a pistol when captured in a Styrofoam-covered underground hide-out, but did not resist, the U.S. military said. In images broadcast Sunday across Iraq and the world, he resembled a desperate fugitive, not an all-powerful president.
3) ``Ladies and gentlemen, we got him,'' U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer told a news conference. ``The tyrant is a prisoner.''
4) ``He was just caught like a rat,'' Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno said. ``When you're in the bottom of a hole you can't fight back.''
5) The former dictator, who could face trial before a new Iraqi tribunal for war crimes, was defiant when top Iraqi officials visited him in captivity hours later _ people at the meeting said he refused to admit to human rights abuses.
6) Saddam will now ``face the justice he denied to millions,'' said U.S. President George W. Bush, whose troops and intelligence agents had been searching in vain for Saddam since April. ``In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over.''
7) U.S. officials declined to specify Saddam's whereabouts on Sunday, but made clear he faces intensive interrogation _ foremost, what he knows about the ongoing insurgency against the U.S.-led occupation, and later about his regime's unconventional weapons programs.
8) The raid by 600 4th Infantry Division soldiers and special forces took place Saturday night at a farm in Adwar, 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Saddam's home town of Tikrit, less than three hours after the pivotal tip was received from an Iraqi.
9) The informant was a member of a family close to Saddam,'' Odierno told reporters in Tikrit. ``Finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals.''
10) After a helicopter took Saddam to Baghdad, U.S. officials brought in former regime officials, including deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, to confirm Saddam's identity, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
11) Whether Saddam's capture would curtail the insurgency was unclear. Odierno said the lack of communications equipment in the hide-out indicated Saddam was not commanding the resistance.
12) Eager to prove to Iraqis that Saddam was in custody, the U.S. military showed video of the ousted leader, haggard and gray-bearded, as a military doctor examined him. In Baghdad, radio stations played jubilant music and some bus passengers shouted, ``They got Saddam! They got Saddam!''
13) In northern Kirkuk, eight people were killed and 80 wounded by shots fired in the air during celebrations of the capture, said hospital official Shehab Ahmed.
14) ``I'm very happy for the Iraqi people. Life is going to be safer now,'' said Yehya Hassan, 35, of Baghdad. ``Now we can start a new beginning.''
15) But some residents of Adwar recalled fondly how Saddam used to swim in the nearby Tigris River and bemoaned the capture of the leader who donated generously to area residents.
16) ``This is bad news to all Iraqis,'' said Ammar Zidan, 21. ``Even if they captured Saddam Hussein, we are all Saddam Hussein. We want freedom and independence from the Americans.''
17) Saddam was captured almost five months after his sons, Qusai and Odai, were killed July 22 in a gunbattle with U.S. troops in the northern city of Mosul. Coalition officials hoped the sons' deaths would weaken the Iraqi resistance; instead the guerrilla campaign escalated.
18) In the latest attack _ before Saddam's capture was announced _ a suspected suicide bomber detonated explosives in a car outside a police station Sunday morning west of Baghdad, killing at least 17 and wounding 33, the U.S. military said. Also Sunday, a U.S. soldier died while trying to disarm a roadside bomb south of the capital _ the 452nd soldier to die in Iraq.
19) Saddam was one of the world's most-wanted fugitives, along with Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network who has not been caught despite a manhunt since November 2001.
20) The United States put a US$25 million bounty for Saddam, as it did for bin Laden, but it was not known immediately if anyone has a claim to the money. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said he could not give any information on the reward.
21) U.S. troops found Saddam hiding in an underground crawl space at the walled compound, Odierno said. The entrance to the hide-out _ covered with Styrofoam, rugs and dirt _ was a few feet from small, mud-brick hut where Saddam had been staying.
22) Saddam was ``very disoriented'' as soldiers brought him out of the hole, Odierno said. A Pentagon diagram showed the hiding place as a (2-meter) 6-foot-deep vertical tunnel, with a shorter tunnel branching out horizontally from one side. A pipe to the concrete surface at ground level provided air.
23) Two other Iraqis _ described as low-level regime figures _ were arrested in the raid, and soldiers found two Kalashnikov rifles, a pistol and US$750,000 in US$100 bills.
24) Sanchez saw Saddam overnight and said the deposed leader ``has been cooperative and is talkative.'' He described Saddam as ``a tired man, a man resigned to his fate.''
25) ``He didn't seem apologetic. He seemed defiant, trying to find excuses for the crimes in the same way he did in the past,'' said Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a senior official of a Shiite Muslim political party who, along with other Iraqi leaders, visited Saddam in captivity.
26) ``When we told him, 'If you go to the streets now, you will see the people celebrating,''' Abdel-Mahdi said. ``He answered, 'Those are mobs.' When we told him about the mass graves, he replied, 'Those are thieves.'''
27) U.S. intelligence and military officials launched an effort a few weeks ago to penetrate Saddam's support network around Tikrit, a U.S. official said. Suspected members of the network were identified and targeted for capture or questioning.
28) Ahmad Chalabi, a member of Iraq's Governing Council, said Saddam will face a public trial ``so that the Iraqi people will know his crimes.''
29) However, U.S. authorities have not yet determined when _ or whether _ to hand Saddam over to the Iraqis for a war crimes trial or what his status would be. Amnesty International said Saddam should be given POW status and allowed visits by the international Red Cross.
30) After invading Iraq on March 20 and setting up their headquarters in a presidential palace compound in Baghdad, U.S. troops placed the reward on Saddam's head and deployed thousands of soldiers to search for him.
31) His capture leaves 13 figures at large from a Most Wanted list of 55 regime officials. The highest ranking fugitive is Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a close Saddam aide who U.S. officials say may be directly organizing resistance.
32) British Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed the capture, saying Saddam ``has gone from power, he won't be coming back.''
33) ``Where his rule meant terror and division and brutality, let his capture bring about unity, reconciliation and peace between all the people of Iraq,'' Blair said.
34) U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the capture ``offered an opportunity to give fresh impetus to the search for peace and stability in Iraq.''
35) In Sweden, former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said he hoped information about the existence of purported weapons of mass destruction, or lack thereof, could be gleaned from Saddam.
36) ``He ought to know quite a lot and be able to tell the story and we all want to get to the bottom of the barrel,'' Blix said.
Saddam's victims are eager to see his trial, but they will never be the same
(APW_ENG_20040701.0018)
1) Firas Adnan need only open his mouth to give evidence of Saddam Hussein's legacy. Just before the regime fell, the 24-year-old laborer quarreled with a Saddam loyalist, who punished him by chopping off his tongue with a box cutter.
2) Now Adnan awaits the prosecution of Saddam with mixed feelings _ happy the former dictator will have to answer for his crimes but bitter because he must live with the scars from the regime.
3) "Saddam will stand trial, OK. But I'm handicapped. What's the use?" Adnan said Wednesday, his slurred words barely comprehensible. "It's not that I'm not happy ... But nothing will give me back my tongue. You know what I mean?"
4) Iraq's new government took legal custody of Saddam on Wednesday, read him his rights and informed him that he would face trial on war crimes charges.
5) Iraqis will get their first look at their former leader since his arrest in December when he appears in court Thursday along with 11 of his top lieutenants. Saddam's trial is not likely to start for months, probably not before 2005.
6) Adnan said he would definitely watch if the trial is televised, as officials have promised.
7) "It should be entertaining, I'll laugh about him," Adnan said. Then he paused and added, "It's not in my nature to gloat over someone's (misfortune)."
8) Asked if Saddam should be executed, Adnan said no _ that would "only give him relief. It would be better if he is jailed; let him try what thousands of us have gone through."
9) But Adnan's mother, Fatma Ahmed, interrupted: "I wish I could kill him with my own hands."
10) "He didn't have mercy on a mother, an old man. He is a despot, the biggest despot, Iraq will be much better without him," the 43-year-old Ahmed said.
11) Millions of other Iraqis understand well what Adnan is talking about. No punishment for Saddam can bring back the thousands of fathers, sons, sisters, daughters and mothers who died _ in regime torture chambers, on the streets of dusty Kurdish villages, on the battlefields in Iran.
12) Adnan's torment came outside his Baghdad home in front of his parents _ only two weeks before the Americans invaded Iraq. Adnan first spoke to an Associated Press reporter on April 18 shortly after U.S. troops swept into Baghdad and Saddam was ousted.
13) His trauma does not seem to have eased since then.
14) "I don't think anything will make me forget what happened to me," Adnan said Wednesday. "I don't think any woman would want to marry me."
15) In December 2002, Adnan got in a fight with some people in the street. A militiaman loyal to Saddam's son Odai intervened and threatened him with a gun. Adnan was so angry, he cursed Odai and Saddam.
16) Adnan escaped but was arrested by the militiamen a few days later, who tortured him for three months, vowing, he said, to "turn me crazy or execute me."
17) One day they woke him up early at prison, beat him severely, blindfolded him and took him away in a car. The vehicle stopped and he was pushed out.
18) "I heard people chanting 'With our soul and blood we redeem you Saddam.' I thought they were going to execute me. I started crying. When they asked me to open my mouth, I begged them to execute me," he said.
19) When they took off his blindfold, he saw he was in his own neighborhood and that his family were being forced to chant and wave portraits of Saddam.
20) But instead of killing him, the militiamen cut off part of his tongue with a box cutter. It took three tries, he said.
21) That was March 5, two weeks before the start of the war on Iraq. He wasn't released until mid-April. "Had the regime not fallen, they would have executed me," Adnan said.
22) Now he, his parents, four brothers and five sisters are crammed in one room at his grandmother's apartment _ his parents sold theirs to bribe officials to spare his life. They sleep on carpets on the floor in the house, shared by 28 members of his extended family.
23) On one wall in the house are framed pictures of his uncles, Qais and Hussein Suleiman, both taken from the streets by Saddam's secret service just before the 1991 Gulf War.
24) "I was still hoping they will come back after the war, I'm still keeping their clothes," said Hamdeya Ahmed Abed, 77, the mother of the disappeared men. "But if they haven't come back 'til now, I guess they never will."
Saddam's trial shows Iraqi's division since some see him a criminal while others a hero
(APW_ENG_20051128.0634)
1) Iraqis appear divided over the trial of Saddam Hussein, which resumed Monday. Some Iraqis believe he should be sentenced to death immediately but others claim he is the legitimate president of the country.
2) As usual, the country's Shiite majority and Kurds, who suffered most under Saddam's 23-year rule, were the ones calling for a harsh punishment against the former leader. But in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, hundreds of his fellow Sunni Arabs demonstrated against the trial.
3) Saadoun Abdul-Hassan, a Shiite living in Baghdad, did not go to his furniture shop Monday and stayed at home to watch the trial. Saddam and seven others are accused of killing over 140 Shiites in Dujail after an assassination attempt.
4) But Abdul-Hassan was disappointed with the proceedings, which were suspended for a week to allow the defense time to find replacements for two lawyers slain since the trial began and for a third who fled the country.
5) "Saddam does not need witnesses or evidence. The mass graves are the biggest witness and he should be executed in order for the security situation to improve," Abdul-Hassan said.
6) In Tikrit, Adnan Brazan, a 38-year-old merchant, described Saddam as the "legitimate president," adding that "those who speak about mass graves and about Dujail should go see what the new government is doing."
7) "They will find real mass graves dug by this government and not by the government of Saddam Hussein," the man said in reference to reports of wide torture in Interior Ministry jails of mainly Sunnis.
8) In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Azhar Hussein described the trial as "very transparent but boring."
9) "Saddam Hussein does not deserve to receive such a good treatment. He used to kill innocent people without trial," said the 25-year-old barber.
10) Speaking in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, teacher Haidar Sabih, 32, said "we want maximum punishment for Saddam as soon as possible."
11) "We condemn the presence of the American and Qatari former officials," he said, referring to former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ex-Qatari Justice Minister Najib al-Nueimi who joined the defense team.
12) Hundreds of thousands of Shiites and Kurds were believed to have been killed during Saddam's rule and the former dictator is being investigated in some dozen cases. Tens of thousands of Kurds were killed in the 1987-88 Anfal campaign while thousands of Shiites were killed when Saddam crushed their uprising the followed the 1991 Gulf War.
13) Sardar Mohammed, 37, said in the northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah that he was very happy to see Saddam being tried. He also expressed satisfaction that Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin is a Kurd.
14) "This is a new experience for the new Iraq," said the history teacher. "Iraqis now are watching the biggest man, Saddam, being tried in an open trial."
15) For another Kurd, Shireen Saleh, 42, she wants to see him executed just as he did to her two brothers.
16) "Two of my brothers were executed when Saddam was in power and I hope Saddam will get the maximum punishment," said the employee at Sulaimaniyah. "Regrettably they have postponed the case twice. I am waiting to see Saddam and his aides being executed."
A ruthless dictator who lost touch with his people and fatally misjudged American patience
(APW_ENG_20061230.0178)
1) Within days of taking power, Saddam Hussein summoned about 400 top officials and announced he had uncovered a plot against the ruling party. The conspirators, he said, were in that very room.
2) As the 42-year-old Saddam coolly puffed on a cigar, names of the plotters were read out. As each name was called, secret police led them away. Some of the bewildered men cried out "long live Saddam Hussein" in a futile display of loyalty.
3) Twenty-two of them were executed. To make sure Iraqis got the word, Saddam videotaped the entire proceeding and distributed copies across the country.
4) The plot claim was a lie. But in a few terrifying minutes on July 22, 1979, Saddam eliminated his potential rivals, consolidating the power he wielded until the Americans and their allies drove him from office a generation later.
5) Saddam, who was hanged Saturday at age 69, ruled Iraq with singular ruthlessness. No one was safe. His two sons-in-law were killed on Saddam's orders after they defected to Jordan but returned in 1996 after receiving guarantees of safety.
6) Such brutality kept him in power through war with Iran, defeat in Kuwait, rebellions by northern Kurds and southern Shiite Muslims, international sanctions, plots and conspiracies.
7) In the end, however, brutality was his undoing. Trusting few except kin, Saddam surrounded himself with sycophants, selected for loyalty rather than intellect and ability.
8) And when he was forced out in April 2003, he left a country impoverished -- despite vast oil wealth -- and roiling with long suppressed ethnic and sectarian hatred.
9) On his rare public appearances, crowds would greet him with chants of "we sacrifice our blood and souls for you Saddam." But gradually, he became isolated from the Iraqi people, within a diminished circle of trusted advisers drawn mostly from his close family or his clan.
10) He ended up dragged from a hole by American soldiers in December 2001, bearded, disheveled and with his arms in the air. The pistol he kept to fight to the end was never fired.
11) Image and illusion were important tools for Saddam.
12) He sought to build an image as an all-wise, all-powerful champion of the Arab nation. His model was the great 12th century warrior Saladin, who captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders and, coincidentally, was born like Saddam in the Tikrit area of northern Iraq.
13) Yet his style was closer to an Iraqi clan chief, doling out favors in return for absolute loyalty while dealing harshly with anyone who questioned his authority.
14) He promoted the illusion of a powerful Iraq -- with the world's fourth largest army and weapons of terrible destruction.
15) Yet it was all hollow. His army crumbled in weeks when confronted by the Americans and their allies in Kuwait in 1991.
16) And in 2003, his capital -- the vaunted regime fortress supposedly ringed by steel with inhabitants eager to sacrifice themselves in its defense -- fell to a single U.S. brigade task force.
17) Saddam's weapons of mass destruction proved a bluff to keep the Iranians, the Syrians, the Israelis -- and the Americans -- at bay. His own scientists didn't have the nerve to tell him that his dreams of weaponry were beyond the country's industrial capability.
18) Instead, Saddam squandered vast sums on opulent palaces with marble hallways, plush carpeting, expensive antique furniture.
19) All of that was a universe from the harsh poverty into which Saddam was born on April 28, 1937, in the village of Ouja near Tikrit. His father, a landless shepherd, died or disappeared before he was born. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly.
20) The young Saddam ran away as a boy and lived with his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, a stridently anti-British, anti-Semitic man whose daughter, Sajida, would become Saddam's wife years later.
21) Under his uncle's influence, Saddam joined the Baath Party, a radical, secular Arab nationalist organization, at age 20. A year later, he fled to Egypt after taking part in an attempt to assassinate the country's ruler, Gen. Abdul-Karim Qassim, and was sentenced to death in absentia.
22) Saddam returned four years later after Qassim was overthrown by the Baath. But the Baath leadership was itself ousted within eight months and Saddam was imprisoned. He escaped in 1967 and took charge of the underground Baath party's secret internal security organization.
23) He swore he would never tolerate the internal dissent that he blamed for the party losing power.
24) In July 1968, Baath returned to power under the leadership of Gen. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who appointed Saddam, his cousin, as his deputy. Saddam systematically purged key party figures, deported thousands of Shiites of Iranian origin, supervised the state takeover of Iraq's oil industry, land reform and modernization -- becoming the real power behind al-Bakr.
25) Al-Bakr decided in 1979 to seek unity with neighboring Syria, which was also under Baath party rule. Syria's president would become al-Bakr's deputy, and Saddam would be marginalized. Saddam forced his cousin to resign -- and then purged his rivals in a party meeting six days later. Hundreds of others in the party and army were executed in the months that followed.
26) Saddam then turned his attention to the country's Shiite majority, whose clerical leaders had long opposed his secular policies. Saddam's fears of a Shiite challenge rose after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Shiite-dominated Iran in 1979.
27) On Sept. 22, 1980, Iraqi troops crossed the Iranian border, launching a war that would last eight years, cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides and devastated Saddam's plans to transform Iraq into a developed, prosperous country.
28) In the longest conventional war of the 20th century, the two countries fired missiles at each other's cities, Iran sent waves of youngsters to death on the front lines, and Iraqi warplanes bombed Iranian schools and even a jetliner unloading passengers at an Iranian airport.
29) In launching his war, Saddam evoked the memory of the 7th century Battle of Qadisiyyah, when Arab armies decisively defeated the Persians, opening what is now Iran to the Muslim faith. The 1980s war became known as "Saddam's Qadisiyyah," and for years after the conflict ended in stalemate, Iraqi currency still carried scenes from the ancient battle -- along with Saddam's image.
30) After the Iranians counterattacked, Saddam turned to the United States, France and Britain for weapons, which those countries gladly sold him to prevent an outright Iranian victory. They turned a blind eye when Saddam ruthlessly struck against Iraqi Kurds, who lived in the border area and were dealing secretly with the Iranians.
31) An estimated 5,000 Kurds died in a chemical weapons attack on the town of Halabja in March 1988. The United States suggested at the time that the Iranians may have been responsible.
32) Only two years after making peace with Iran, Saddam invaded Kuwait, whose rulers had refused to forgive Iraq's war debt and opposed increases in oil prices that Iraq desperately needed to recover from the conflict with Iran.
33) Iraqi nationalists had never accepted the existence of an independent Kuwait, which they believed was established by British imperialism. Kuwait was annexed as the 19th province of Iraq.
34) The United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Iraq and a U.S.-led coalition attacked. "The great duel, the mother of all battles, has begun. The dawn of victory nears as this great showdown begins," Saddam said on Iraqi radio on Jan. 17, 1991.
35) But the Iraqis were driven out of Kuwait. The 1991 war triggered uprisings among Iraq's Shiites, brutally crushed by Saddam, and the Kurds, who carved out a self-ruled area under U.S. and British air cover.
36) Saddam boasted his survival was proof Iraq had won its war against America, a message that won him stature among many Arabs. But the sanctions were not lifted because the United States accused Saddam of retaining weapons of mass destruction.
37) His brutality was starkly illustrated when the defecting sons-in-law were killed. Their widows, however, forgave him. "He was a very good father, loving, has a big heart," Raghad Saddam Hussein told CNN in August 2003 while Saddam was on the run from U.S. forces. "He had so many feelings and he was very tender with all of us," Rana Hussein said in the same interview.
38) Saddam also sought to be a force in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In April 1990, hinting he had secret super-weapons, he declared: "By God, we will make the fire eat up half of Israel." During the Gulf War he fired Scud missiles into Israel, and during the Palestinian uprising a decade later he paid cash grants to families of suicide bombers.
39) The U.N. sanctions remained in effect until his regime collapsed in 2003, devastating Iraq's economy and impoverishing a people who had been among the most prosperous in the Middle East. They also set the stage for the collapse of the regime itself.
40) The Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. focused attention on Saddam as a sponsor of terrorism. His refusal to meet U.N. demands for full disclosure of his illegal weapons program provided a justification for war.
41) As U.S.-led forces massed, Saddam claimed America's "devastating brutal instinct" had been harnessed by Zionism.
42) "Halt your evil doings against the mother of civilization ... the cradle and the birthplace of prophets and messengers," he warned the United States. "The entire nation will rise up in defense of its right to life, of its role and of anything it holds sacred ... Their arrows will be on the wrong track or will recoil to their breasts, God willing ... The martyrs of the nation will turn into green birds in paradise as the Merciful has promised."
43) An American-led force invaded on March 20, 2003. Within three weeks, Iraq's army had collapsed and Baghdad had fallen. U.S. Marines tore down Saddam's statue in the center of Baghdad and the dictator fled to his northern homeland.
44) His sons, Odai and Qusai, and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the Americans in Mosul in July 2003. When Saddam himself was captured the following December, Iraqis cheered and fired shots in the air. "The former dictator of Iraq will face the justice he denied to millions," U.S. President George W. Bush said.
45) But as he went on trial in October 2005 before an Iraqi judge, his country was engulfed in an anti-American insurgency.
46) For Saddam, the trial was a pulpit to rail against the U.S. presence in Iraq in hopes of winning the approval of history if not an acquittal. In the early sessions, he strutted into court, grasping a Quran in one arm while waving the other at his fellow defendants.
47) "How can a judge like yourself accept a situation like this?" Saddam barked. "This game must not continue. If you want Saddam Hussein's neck, you can have it."
48) But the trial dragged on, the chief judge was replaced, and Saddam's manner calmed as he realized the inevitability of conviction and the death sentence that followed.
(APW_ENG_20061230.0244)
1) EDITORS:
2) Our package on the execution of Saddam Hussein:
3) MAIN STORY:
4) BC-ME-GEN--IRAQ-SADDAM
5) BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein, the dictator who ruled Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century and was driven from power by a U.S.-led war that left his country in shambles, has been executed, Iraqi state-run television reported. By Christopher Torchia and Qassim Abdul-Zahra.
6) AP Photos BAG102, 104, 109.
7) SIDEBARS:
8) -- BC-ME-GEN--IRAQ-OBIT-SADDAM: 1,900-word stand-alone obituary, with BC-ME-GEN--OBIT-SADDAM-ABRIDGED, a 1,200-word version.
9) -- BC-ME-GEN--SADDAM-LEGACY: Saddam's lasting impact on Iraq and the Middle East.
10) -- BC-ME-GEN--SADDAM-A MEETING: a recollection by AP correspondent Robert H. Reid of a sit-down session with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war.
11) -- BC-ME-GEN--SADDAM-OTHER DICTATORS: What became of other world dictators.
12) -- BC-NA-GEN--US-IRAQ: President George W. Bush calls the execution "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy."
13) -- BC-NA-GEN--US-SADDAM-MILITARY FAMILIES: Reaction from families of U.S. service members.
14) -- BC-NA-GEN--US-IRAQI REACTION: Iraqi-Americans react to developments.
15) Boxes:
16) -- BC-ME-GEN--SADDAM VERDICT-GLANCE: Charges against Saddam that led to his execution.
17) -- BC-ME-GEN--SADDAM-CHARGES: Major current accusations against Saddam, and charges that haven't come to trial.
18) -- BC-ME-GEN--SADDAM-CHRONOLOGY.
19) -- BC-ME-GEN--SADDAM-TRIAL QUOTES.
20) -- BC-ME-GEN--SADDAM-FAMILY. The fates of members of his family.
21) -- BC-NA-GEN--US-SADDAM-BUSH STATEMENT.
22) MULTIMEDIA:
23) Photos:
24) -- NY170, An undated photo of Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein with his sons, Odai, left, and Qusai.
25) -- NY158, Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is questioned by Chief Investigative Judge Raid Juhi.
26) -- NY161, A 1990 picture of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with his family.
27) -- NY162, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Yasser Arafat in Havana, Cuba, in 1979.
28) -- NY153, Cpl. Edward Chin, places a U.S. flag on the face of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's statue before tearing down it in downtown Baghdad.
29) -- NY144, Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein yells at the court as a bailiff attempts to silence him as the verdict is delivered during his trial held under tight security in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
30) -- NY141, Captured former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein undergoes medical examinations in Baghdad.
31) Graphics:
32) SADDAM TIMELINE: profiles Saddam's life and trial; 3c; 146 mm.
33) SADDAM VERDICT: show key figures in a photo of the Saddam Hussein trial and give outcome of verdict; with related stories; 3c x 5 3/8 inches; 146 mm x 137 mm; 3c x 5 3/8 inches; 146 mm x 137 mm.
34) WORLD DICTATORS; a 3-column graphic showing Saddam and others.
35) The AP
Saddam Hussein dies on the gallows, exiting the Iraqi stage after a long, brutal reign
(APW_ENG_20061230.0270)
1) Saddam Hussein, the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century and was driven from power by a U.S.-led war that left his country in shambles, was taken to the gallows and executed Saturday. On the gallows, Saddam refused to wear a hood and shouted: "God is great."
2) It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.
3) President Bush called Saddam's execution "the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime."
4) Baghdad was relatively quiet after the announcement, and the government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did when Saddam was convicted on Nov. 5 to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence. In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, some people danced and fired guns in the air to celebrate the former dictator's death.
5) State-run Iraqiya television news reported that Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, also were hanged. However, three officials said only Saddam was executed.
6) "We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run Iraqiyah.
7) Al-Rubaie said Saddam "totally surrendered" and did not resist. He said a judge read the sentence to Saddam, who was taken in handcuffs to the execution room. When he stood in the execution room, photographs and video footage were taken, al-Rubaie said.
8) "He did not ask for anything. He was carrying a Quran and said: 'I want this Quran to be given to this person,' a man he called Bander," he said. Al-Rubaie said he did not know who Bander was.
9) "Saddam was treated with respect when he was alive and after his death," al-Rubaie said. "Saddam's execution was 100 percent Iraqi and the American side did not interfere."
10) Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Saddam struggled when he was taken from his cell in an American military prison, but was composed in his last moments. He said Saddam was clad completely in black, with a jacket, trousers, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb.
11) Shortly before the execution, Saddam's hat was removed and Saddam was asked if he wanted to say something, al-Askari said.
12) "No I don't want to," al-Askari quoted Saddam as saying. Saddam did repeate a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.
13) "Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a bag," al-Askari said.
14) "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab," al-Askari said.
15) He said the government had not decided what to do with Saddam's body.
16) Mariam al-Rayes, a legal expert and a former member of the Shiite bloc in parliament, told Iraqiya television that the execution "was filmed and God willing it will be shown. There was one camera present, and a doctor was also present there."
17) Al-Rayes, an ally of al-Maliki, did not attend the execution. She said Al-Maliki did not attend but was represented by an aide.
18) The station earlier was airing national songs after the first announcement and had a tag on the screen that read "Saddam's execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq's history."
19) The execution was carried out around the start of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic world's largest holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. Many Muslims celebrate by sacrificing domestic animals, usually sheep.
20) Sunnis and Shiites throughout the world began observing the four-day holiday at dawn Saturday, but Iraq's Shiite community -- the country's majority -- was due to start celebrating on Sunday.
21) The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from a town where assassins tried to kill the dictator in 1982. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.
22) A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.
23) Al-Maliki had rejected calls that Saddam be spared, telling families of people killed during the dictator's rule that would be an insult to the victims.
24) "Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him, and there will be no review or delay in carrying out the sentence," al-Maliki's office quoted him as saying during a meeting with relatives before the hanging.
25) Human Rights Watch criticized the execution, calling Saddam's trial "deeply flawed."
26) "Saddam Hussein was responsible for massive human rights violations, but that can't justify giving him the death penalty, which is a cruel and inhuman punishment," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program.
27) The hanging of Saddam, who was ruthless in ordering executions of his opponents, will keep other Iraqis from pursuing justice against the ousted leader.
28) At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.
29) Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds.
30) Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."
31) "Oh, God, you know what Saddam has done! He killed millions of Iraqis in prisons, in wars with neighboring countries and he is responsible for mass graves. Oh God, we ask you to take revenge on Saddam," said Sheik Sadralddin al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
32) On Thursday, two half brothers visited Saddam in his cell, a member of the former dictator's defense team, Badee Izzat Aref, told The Associated Press by telephone from the United Arab Emirates. He said the former dictator handed them his personal belongings.
33) A senior official at the Iraqi defense ministry said Saddam gave his will to one of his half brothers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
34) In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.
35) One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings.
36) The message called on Iraqis to put aside the sectarian hatred that has bloodied their nation for a year and voiced support for the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency against U.S.-led forces, saying: "Long live jihad and the mujahedeen."
37) Saddam urged Iraqis to rely on God's help in fighting "against the unjust nations" that ousted his regime.
38) Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.
39) "This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country."
40) Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.
41) Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.
42) In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.
43) Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy.
44) During that war, as part of the wider campaign against Kurds, the Iraqi military used chemical weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians.
45) The economic troubles from the Iran war led Saddam to invade Kuwait in the summer of 1990, seeking to grab its oil wealth, but a U.S.-led coalition inflicted a stinging defeat on the Iraq army and freed the Kuwaitis.
46) U.N. sanctions imposed over the Kuwait invasion remained in place when Saddam failed to cooperate fully in international efforts to ensure his programs for creating weapons of mass destruction had been dismantled. Iraqis, once among the region's most prosperous, were impoverished.
47) The final blow came when U.S.-led troops invaded in March 2003. Saddam's regime fell quickly, but political, sectarian and criminal violence have created chaos that has undermined efforts to rebuild Iraq's ruined economy.
48) While he wielded a heavy hand to maintain control, Saddam also sought to win public support with a personality cult that pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports and shops and on Iraq's currency.