What is happening is that we are getting to the point of saying, "to hell with both sides."
Shia hostages hanged in streets in revenge for Saddam's execution
Telegraph UK
By Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad and Damien McElroy
Last Updated: 1:47am GMT 10/01/2007
Saddam Hussein's execution has inspired a gruesome cycle of revenge, with scores of Shia Muslims found hanged from lampposts in Baghdad.
The residents of the city's Haifa Street will long remember the events of Sunday morning. As shop owners raised their shutters and stall holders set out their stock, three minibuses roared to a halt.
Gunmen jumped out and pulled blindfolded prisoners on to the street. Ropes were tied to lampposts and electricity poles. Those hostages who resisted were shot. Others who were still alive had nooses tied around their necks and were then suspended in mid air to choke to death.
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All were left hanging, and the victims received little sympathy from those who witnessed the events.
"We watched as all these blindfolded men were hung up and some were shot in the head," Imad Atwan, a supermarket worker said.
"Altogether there were 23 bodies. We are all Sunni people here so we supported the gunmen. Some of them are the guards of our neighbourhood.
"Somebody called the police and the guards waited to shoot at them when they arrived.
"Half an hour after the police fled, they came back with the army and took the bodies away."
Capt Mohammad Salim, of the interior ministry, said: "We have gathered 102 Shia bodies and believe that 90 per cent of them were taken hostage for Saddam Hussein's execution and then found hanging from poles by ropes."
The discoveries were not limited to Haifa Street. People murdered in the same way had been found in Al Doura district and Amriya, in western Baghdad.
The interior ministry estimates that 200 Iraqis were taken hostage after Saddam was sentenced to death for ordering the murder of 148 Shia villagers in the city of Dujail after an assassination attempt in the 1980s.
"We counted the people from families that reported a phone call claiming their relatives would be killed if Saddam Hussein was hung."
With the Iraqi government poised to execute the former dictator's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, and the ex-head of Baghdad's Revolutionary Court, Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, officials expect the rest of the hostages to be executed in similar fashion.
At a second trial in Baghdad yesterday, the first order of business saw Judge Mohammed al-Ureybi strike off charges against Saddam for ordering the "Anfal" extermination campaign against Kurdish villagers.
When Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed – better known as "Chemical Ali" – attempted to read from the Koran in Saddam's memory, the court microphones were turned off.
The court heard a tape recording in which the prosecutor claimed "Chemical Ali" vowed to use weapons of mass destruction against civilians. "I will strike them with chemical weapons and kill them all," he said.
•Seven children are reported to have died worldwide after seeing video footage of the execution of Saddam, many in "play" hangings.
In the latest incident a boy of 12 hanged himself in north-east Saudi Arabia on Sunday, the Al-Hayat newspaper reported. His death followed similar hangings in Yemen, India, Algeria and America.
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