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."