Saddam's "eye-for-an-eye" death familiar to Arabs

RIYADH, Dec 30 (Reuters) Saddam Hussein's death by hanging conforms to the adage ''an eye for an eye'' but his execution on a major Islamic holiday also seems vindictive to many Muslims.

Capital punishment is practiced throughout the Arab and Islamic world, ranging from public beheading by the sword in Saudi Arabia to hanging and firing squad in most countries.

Saddam went to the gallows after being found guilty of killing and other crimes against the Shi'ite people of Dujail after Shi'ite militants tried to assassinate him there in 1982.

In a recent court appearance he said he preferred to die a hero's death, shot by firing squad rather than face the humiliation of hanging like a common criminal.

The logic of killing him to match the suffering he inflicted was clear to Muslims performing the haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, who sympathised with him for his anti-US stances.

''In Islam when you kill someone you should be killed in the same manner,'' said Abu Lutfi, from Egypt.

Saddam had no reputation for showing mercy, and oversaw the murder of Baath party rivals denounced as traitors at a televised meeting in 1979.

His life in return for the lives of 148 Iraqis pales in significance when set against the hundreds of thousands thought to have died at the hands of his regime, which ran one of the most brutal dictatorships in modern history.

The list of those who longed to see justice for other crimes is long, including Iraqi Kurds, Iranians and Iraqi Sunni dissidents.

Kurds will be disappointed that Saddam will not be convicted of genocide against them in a second trial that had just begun.

It was the 1988 chemical gas attack on Kurds in what is known as the ''Anfal'', or ''Spoils of War'', campaign that did more than anything else to demonise Saddam in the minds of people around the world in the lead-up to the US-led invasion of 2003 that ended his three-decade grip on Iraq.

''It's well-known that it takes tyrants to take out a tyrant,'' Saudi pilgrim Hisham al-Zubeidi said.

EID INSULT? But the decision by Iraq's Shi'ite government to put Saddam to death during the Eid al-Adha holiday could add to a growing divide between Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs in the West Asia.

Violence between Shi'ites empowered by the 2003 war and the Sunni minority favoured by Saddam has taken Iraq to the brink of civil war. Tens of thousands have been killed or displaced.

The most important date in the Islamic calendar, the Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice, marks biblical patriarch Abraham's willingness to kill his son for God. Muslim countries often pardon criminals to mark the occasion, and prisoners are rarely executed at that time.

The Eid also falls during the 5-day haj, when more than 2 million Muslims from around the world follow ancient rites at the Islamic holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

While some Shi'ites may regard Saddam's death as an Eid gift from God, for hardline Sunnis it will confirm their worst views against Shi'ites as heretics in league with Washington.

One of the most revered clerics of Saudi Arabia's hardline Wahhabi school of Islam issued a fatwa earlier this month condemning all Shi'ites as infidels, an ominous sign of the sectarianism now gripping the region.

Yet Saddam's end was less grisly than it might have been given Iraq's history. After a coup against the British-backed monarchy in 1958, body parts of former prime minister Nuri Said were dragged through the streets.

When Baathists first came to power in 1963, they displayed the bullet-riddled body of deposed president Abdel-Karim Qassem on state television after a show trial, before engaging in a ruthless purge of the communists who had backed him.

REUTERS AKJ PM1947