Saddam urges insurgents to be "just"

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Media: AFP
Byline: n/a
Date: 16 October 2006

AMMAN - Ousted leader Saddam Hussein has urged the Iraqi people to be
"just" in the insurgency against US-led troops, in a letter from his US-run
prison sent through his lawyers.

"Resistance against the invaders is a right and a duty ... but I urge the
brothers in the noble resistance and the great Iraqi people to be just and
fair," Saddam said in the letter, a copy of which was sent to AFP by his
Iraqi lawyer, Khalil Dulaimi.

"I also urge you to forgive those who lost their way ... and keep the door
of forgiveness open until the last minute that precedes the hour of
liberation," Saddam wrote from prison.

"Do not forget that your goal is to liberate your country from the invaders
and their followers and is not a settling of accounts outside this goal,"
Saddam said.

"Remember that after each war there is peace, after each division there is
unity," he said, adding that "victory against the occupation forces is
certain".

Saddam insisted on the unity of the Iraqi people.

"We are a united and undivided people ... made up of Arabs, Kurds and
various religions and communities," he said.

Saddam also asked the Iraqi people "to forgive those who shed the blood of
your sons and brothers, including the sons of Saddam Hussein" -- a
reference to Uday and Qusay Saddam Hussein killed in a US raid in 2003.

The letter, which Saddam said he wrote to mark the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan, came as the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad was poised to set a
date for its verdict in the ousted president's first trial on charges of
crimes against humanity.

Saddam faces the death penalty if convicted over the killing of 148 Shiite
civilians from the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, following a 1982
assassination attempt on the then president.
 
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