Two political groups set up condolence house in Bahrain
http://archive.gulfnews.com/region/Bahrain/10093865.html
01/02/2007 10:07 PM | By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief
Manama: Two political formations have set up a condolence house here to mourn the death of Saddam Hussain.
The three-day gathering, organised by the Democratic National Rally and the Islamic Arab Wasat, started last night and is expected to draw hundreds of pan-Arabists and sympathisers.
“The condolences are to pay tribute to the martyr of the Arab nation, the Combatant President Saddam Hussain,” one of the organisers said.
Two political groups set up condolence house in Bahrain
http://archive.gulfnews.com/region/Bahrain/10093865.html
01/02/2007 10:07 PM | By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief
Manama: Two political formations have set up a condolence house here to mourn the death of Saddam Hussain.
The three-day gathering, organised by the Democratic National Rally and the Islamic Arab Wasat, started last night and is expected to draw hundreds of pan-Arabists and sympathisers.
“The condolences are to pay tribute to the martyr of the Arab nation, the Combatant President Saddam Hussain,” one of the organisers said.
None of the other 13 official political societies commented on the execution.
Bahrain has been sharply divided over the hanging of Saddam in Baghdad minutes before the prayers of the Feast of the Sacrifice on Saturday.
“His destiny was to die as a martyr. He refused to give in to the occupiers and died standing tall like the palm trees of Iraq, the country that he loved dearly. He stood against the Israelis and the Iranians and his heroes are still fighting to preserve our Arab identity from the combined onslaught of the Anglo-Saxons and Iranians,” Shura Council (upper house) member Sameera Rajab said.
Writing in Akhbar Al Khaleej, she stressed that the execution on the Eid day was part of the crusade launched by President George Bush against Muslims.
“When Bush uttered the word crusade in 2003, it was not a slip of the tongue or a different meaning of the word. He truly meant a war against Muslims. But killing the hero of the Arab masses will not help him. Millions of free Iraqis and Arabs have pledged to avenge the execution of the hero and to liberate Iraq.”
But for Dr Hasan Madan, the head of the leftist Mebar Democratic Society, the death of Saddam was the expected end to a leader who favoured adventurism and ruled through violence.
“We need to draw the lesson that dictatorships invariably end in catastrophes for the people. We need to uphold the values of tolerance, power-sharing and co-existence in order to advance nations. Saddam did the opposite by engaging in military adventures and dominating his people through the military and intelligence services,” he said.
At the grassroots level, Suad, an optician, said that she wore black clothes on the Eid days to express her sadness over the execution, but Hassan, who works with a publishing house, said that the Iraqi authorities should have cut Saddam to pieces to punish him for his crimes.
