Saddam Hussein

The body of Saddam Hussein was buried in the town of his birth in the hours before dawn Sunday, after a final journey into the night aboard an American military helicopter that carried him from Baghdad.
The burial was the final act in a grim and turbulent 24 hours that began with Mr. Hussein's execution at dawn on Saturday.
But like much else about Mr. Hussein's life and death, his passage back to the otherwise unmemorable town where he grew up, Awja, was marked by bitterness and dispute.
It was only under American pressure that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Iraq's new ruler, agreed to surrender the body for burial after his aides insisted for much of Saturday that it would be held in a secret location until the risks of violence or turmoil at the burial site receded.

Human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) on Sunday sharply criticized the verdict served in Baghdad to Saddam Hussein, saying the trial had been 'marred by serious flaws.' AI's director for the Middle East and North Africa, Malcom Smart, said 'this trial should have been a major contribution towards establishing justice and the rule of law in Iraq, and in ensuring truth and accountability for the massive human rights violations perpetrated by Saddam Hussein's rule. 'In practice, it has been a shabby affair, marred by serious flaws that call into question the capacity of the tribunal, as currently established, to administer justice fairly, in conformity with international standards,' he added. Smart said that every accused had the right to a fair trial, something which itself had been 'routinely ignored through the decades of Saddam Hussein's tyranny.' This was rejected by Mr Downer who told ABC radio the trial was fair. "I don't think that it was a shabby affair. The information that we have is that the trial was a fair trial and it was conducted appropriately. I don't think there's any doubt about that," Mr Downer said.