August 6, 2014



Saddam Hussein's Sunni tribal allies moved his body from a family plot eight months ago, fearful that Shia Muslims would harm it, according to a Sunni leader.

The caution paid off for the executed former Iraqi president's former allies. A leader from Saddam's Albu Nasir tribe and a police official said that Shia militiamen later broke into the grave site, tore down photographs of the former Iraqi leader and then set the area on fire.

"We had moved the body eight months ago to a safer place. We were afraid something would happen to him. Our fears proved true," said the tribal leader who asked not to be named. "There were four of us that took up this mission. We could not move the bodies of Saddam's sons. We are afraid someone will desecrate those graves."

The tribal chief would not say where the body was taken. "We moved him to a place far from the hands of his enemies," he said. "Isn't it enough for them that they killed him once. Now they are afraid of his body."

Saddam was hanged in 2006 after being convicted of crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shia villagers in 1982. He was buried in his birthplace of Awja, 95 miles north of Baghdad. Shia officials taunted him as he stood on the gallows, defiant until his last breath.

"A militia force entered Saddam's tomb site, destroyed everything and set it on fire. Until now they are surrounding the tomb sites," said a police captain from the nearby city of Samarra.

The tribal chief confirmed that account. "Shia militia broke into the tomb, smashed everything inside, including photographs of Saddam Hussein." A leader of a Shia militia based nearby confirmed that militias set fire to the grave.

Shia militias are positioned near Saddam's grave to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, also known as Isis, the Sunni militants who swept through northern Iraq in June and declared a caliphate.




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