Khamenei says satisfied over arrest of Saddam, targets Bush, Sharon
Khamenei says satisfied over arrest of Saddam, targets Bush, Sharon
Hossein Jasseb, Agence France-Presse, Tehran
Iran's supreme leader declared on Tuesday that all Iranians were "pleased" at the arrest of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but said U.S. President George W. Bush and Israel's Ariel Sharon should also go.
"The Iranian nation is very pleased with his arrest," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech, in which he described the ousted Iraqi leader as a "wild animal", a "corrupt being" and a "bloodthirsty wolf".
Speaking in the city of Qazvin, the all-powerful leader also accused Saddam's captors of hypocrisy, noting their support of Iraq during its 1980-88 war against the Islamic republic that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iranians.
"The same Americans who are now happy over his arrest were at the time shaking his hand. The current U.S. defense minister (Donald Rumsfeld) met with Saddam in Baghdad, promised to help him and helped him in order to put Islamic Iran under pressure," Khamenei said.
"I heard the U.S. president told Saddam that 'the world is a better place without you'. I want to tell the U.S. president that he should know the world would be an even better place without Bush and Sharon."
State television's live coverage of the speech showed the crowd responding with the habitual chants of "Death to Saddam", "Death to Israel" and "Death to America".
Khamenei's sentiment was also voiced by powerful former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, now the head of Iran's top political arbitration body and widely seen as the regime's number-two.
"Saddam did not have anything except wickedness for the people of Iraq and his neighbors, and the destiny of America and Israel will be the same," he was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA.
Meanwhile, official media reported that Iran's judiciary has written to UN chief Kofi Annan, demanding that Saddam also be tried for crimes against the Iranian people, and even arguing he should face a court here.
"It is only fit to award the prosecution of Saddam to the people who have the right to prosecute him, so his prosecution will be a way to heal their wounds," stated the letter.
"The oppressed reserve the right to prosecute Saddam's oppressions," it added, citing the Iraqi leader's 1980 invasion of Iran which killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the subsequent eight-year war.
The letter from the hardline-run judiciary also insisted that "Iranian public opinion wants Saddam to be prosecuted in a just court in the Islamic Republic of Iran."
On Monday, Iran's reformist government demanded that Saddam be tried before an international court, and announced it was preparing a comprehensive complaint.
An international court "should determine who equipped this dictator to disrupt our region and impose three big crises," an Iranian government spokesman said, referring to Saddam's invasion of Iran, Kuwait and then this year's U.S. invasion of Iraq itself.
Britain, France and the United States as well as a number of key Arab states backed Iraq when it invaded its neighbor.
Iran's hardline press also turned its focus on the U.S. and its regional allies, arguing that following the dramatic capture of the ex-Iraqi leader U.S. troops no longer had any "pretext" to stay in the country.
"Now that he is in their hands, they have no alibi to stay and so should leave as soon as possible," the hardline Jomhuri Islami paper wrote.
"Most Arab leaders were Saddam's accomplices, and an open trial would provoke scandals that would be a blow not only to the Americans," the paper said in an editorial.
It listed Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, the late King Hussein of Jordan as well as Saudi Arabia's rulers as those who "generously gave billions of dollars to Saddam."