More posthumous news about Saddam Hussein:
Libya has announced that, in memory of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, it will erect a statue of him standing on the gallows. Iraqi officials have arrested two guards who taunted Saddam as he was being hanged.
With much of the Arab world up in arms over the hanging of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Saturday, it didn't take long for Libya to jump into the fray. The government in Tripoli announced on Thursday that it was planning to erect a statue of Saddam, depicting him standing on the gallows. He will join a similar monument to the Libyan freedom fighter Omar Mukhtar, a national hero who was executed in 1931 after fighting against the Italian occupation.
"The revolutionary committees have decided to erect a statue of Saddam Hussein standing beside Omar Mukhtar on the gallows," the government said in a press release.
Following Saddam's execution, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi declared three days of mourning and flags on government buildings were flown at half mast. One day prior to Saddam's death, Gadhafi had said that the former Iraqi leader was a prisoner of war and should be tried by the United States and Britain instead of in an Iraqi court. Saddam was hanged for the massacre of 148 Shiites in the village of Dujail in the 1980s.
According to
another article from Der Spiegel, Saddam created a literary monument to himself:
Saddam Hussein in those final days turned to poetry, so often his source of solace in times of difficulty, inspired by his vision of himself as inseparably tied to those he led.
The poem, "Unbind It," is his rallying call to be sounded from the grave.
It is a mixture of defiance and reflection, but no remorse. No mention of the tens of thousands of lives he was responsible for taking. No expression of guilt or sadness or regret . . .
At the height of his power, Iraqis brave enough to discuss the subject would shake their heads at his rambling speeches and convoluted verse. Some would suggest, with glances over their shoulders, that in his efforts to show himself as a scholar of Arab history and literature, he inadvertently revealed some of the darker recesses of his mind.
According to news reports, Mr. Hussein even made gifts of his poetry to his American captors.
Iraqis familiar with his style helped translate his death cell poem. Sections that would have been unintelligible in a literal translation have been interpreted loosely in an attempt to reveal the meaning Mr. Hussein intended.[...]
Whenever a dictator leaves the world, all the
would-be dictators work harder to make up the deficiency.
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