Iraqi keeps noose that hanged Saddam

A former Iraqi national security adviser said recently that he keeps in his office the noose with which Saddam Hussein was hanged.

In an interview with al-Jazeera that aired last month, Mowaffak al-Rubaei said that he “wanted to remind each and every one that this is the fate of anyone, in the future of Iraq, who becomes a dictator and terrorizes his people. This is a lesson for us. Iraqis should not go back to dictatorship, and should not go back to the exclusion of any community,” Rubaei said, according to a translation posted last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Rubaei, who was sentenced to death in absentia by the former Iraqi dictator, said that he did not believe that the move was distasteful.

He also defended Hussein’s execution. “I never felt it was settling scores when we pulled the trigger on Saddam Hussein, in that gallows,” he said. “There was no injustice being done in that chamber. There are some people, the executioners from the Ministry of Justice, who were shouting: ‘Long live that’ and ‘Down with this.’ But that was a spontaneous reaction.”

Hussein was captured by US troops on December 13, 2003. He was tried by the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal, found guilty of crimes against humanity, and sentenced to death. On December 30, 2006, the former Iraqi dictator was hanged in Kadhimiya, north of Baghdad.

Rubaei added that sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites was benefiting Israel.

“Ten years ago, when you listened to the Arab media, it was all Arabs versus Israelis. Can you see what the Middle East’s problem is now? It has been converted from Israelis vs. Arabs to Shiites vs. Sunnis.”