Word: verdicts
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...unseemly haste prompted accusations that the IHT had been pressured to pass judgment just before the U.S. midterm elections - accusations denied by American officials. "The Iraqis set the date for the delivery of the verdict," says a senior State Department official. "It's not something we control...
...What will not subside is the violence. Far from being collective therapy, the trial has only helped widen the sectarian divide. While Shi'ites celebrated the verdict, many of Saddam's fellow Sunnis protested. In his hometown of Tikrit, over 1,000 people staged demonstrations in defiance of the curfew. In Baghdad's mainly Sunni Adhamiya district, several mortars landed near the Abu Hanifa shrine, the most revered Sunni mosque in the country...
...Anticipating an uptick in Sunni insurgent activity, the Iraqi government cancelled all military leave and put security forces on high alert. With much of the Sunni Triangle under an all-day curfew, pro-Saddam insurgents had few opportunities to express their reaction to the verdict; in Baghdad, there was only sporadic violence. Saddam's defense lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, warned in an open letter to President Bush that "this decision will set the country ablaze again and plunge the entire region into the unknown." However after the verdict al-Dulaimi told the Associated Press that Saddam had urged Iraqis...
...Truth be told, there was never any doubt Saddam would get the death sentence; he had himself anticipated it weeks ago, when he asked that he be shot - like a soldier - rather than hanged. That request was not honored. As the presiding judge, Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman, announced the verdict, the tyrant responded by shouting, "God is great," and "Long live the nation!" and an assortment of other slogans. But by his standards, it was a subdued performance; there was none of the bug-eyed ranting that has characterized many of his court appearances...
...verdict came nearly 13 months after the trial had begun in a high-security courtroom in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. The eight men were tried for an incident that, until the trial began, most Iraqis had long forgotten. On July 8, 1982, at the height of the Iraq-Iran war, Saddam's motorcade was attacked by gunmen in the village of Dujail, an hour's drive north of Baghdad. During the trial, Saddam recollected the attempted assassination, saying, "Bullets were in front of me and here and there. [But] God wanted to save...