Saddam will hang if found guilty, says prosecutor

BAGHDAD: The trial of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and seven former aides resumed before the Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday. Speaking on Iraqia state-television just before the trial resumed, the court’s chief prosecutor, Jaafar Mussawi, said Saddam would hang immediately without undergoing further trials if found guilty and sentenced to death in the present case.

Saddam is on trial for crimes against humanity in connection with the killing of 148 villagers from Dujail, north of Baghdad, after he escaped an assassination attempt there in 1982. “If the court passes a death sentence on any of the defendants in the Dujail case, the law is clear, the sentence must be carried out within 30 days following the appeal,” Mussawi said. More.