Abstract
Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death by hanging for his role in the massacre of 148 Shi’ites in the town of Dujail in 1982. Much of the world’s reaction has been neutral, characterized by muttering about not wanting to contribute to violence within the country, except for NGOs which predictably condemned the proceedings as unfair and/or illegal. But Konstantin Kosachev, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Russian Duma, called it as he saw it: Today's ruling was quite predictable, given the attitudes to Saddam Hussein's regime that exist both in and beyond Iraqi society. The punishment was deliberately chosen to be the harshest. . . . I think that the death sentence on Saddam Hussein is unlikely to be carried out. It will be stopped one way or another, either at the level of the Iraqi president or by other means. This is more of a moral ruling, revenge that modern Iraq is taking on the Saddam Hussein regime.