Saddam Hussein Executed: Iraq's Dictator Hanged

Saddam Hussein dropped through the trapdoor of a makeshift gallows in a fortified Iraqi intelligence building in the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad at approximately 6:10 AM on December 30, 2006, executed by hanging for crimes against humanity. The dictator who had ruled Iraq for twenty-four years, waged two devastating wars, and ordered the gassing of Kurdish villages went to his death reciting the shahada while guards in ski masks taunted him with chants of "Muqtada," a reference to the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The execution was the final act of a trial conducted by the Iraqi High Tribunal that had convicted Saddam for the 1982 Dujail massacre, in which his security forces killed 148 Shia men and boys in retaliation for an assassination attempt during a presidential motorcade through the town. The tribunal, widely criticized by international legal observers for procedural irregularities, had sentenced Saddam to death on November 5, 2006. Three defense lawyers were assassinated during the proceedings, and the first presiding judge resigned under government pressure. A cell phone video leaked within hours, showing Saddam calm while executioners shouted Shia militia slogans. The footage spread virally across the internet and satellite television. The timing, on the first day of Eid al-Adha, was interpreted by Sunni Arabs as a deliberate provocation deepening the sectarian divisions tearing Iraq apart. The execution failed to bring the closure or national reconciliation that the Iraqi government and its American backers had hoped for. Sunni insurgent violence escalated sharply in the weeks that followed. Iraq continued to spiral into civil war throughout 2007 before the U.S. troop surge and the Sunni Awakening movement gradually reduced the killing. Saddam was buried in his hometown of Al-Awja near Tikrit, and his grave became a pilgrimage site for Sunni supporters before being destroyed during the Islamic State capture of the area in 2014.