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MINA - For many Muslim faithful performing the annual hajj pilgrimage, news of Saddam Hussein's hanging on Saturday came as an unpleasant surprise, though Iraqis were divided about his end.
"He was a very good man and all the Pakistani people love him," said Mohammad Nadim, a 45-year-old Pakistani who is among more than two million Muslims from all over the world taking part in the hajj in Saudi Arabia.
Nadim's government, although a key US ally, described the execution of the ousted Iraqi president as a "sad event" and expressed the hope that it would not further exacerbate the violence in Iraq.
"Allahu Akbar (God is greatest). God rest his soul," said Salem al-Riyahi, a Tunisian who like many other pilgrims could not hide his sadness at Saddam's demise.
"This sentence came from (US President George W.) Bush, not the Iraqi court," Riyahi, 55, told AFP.
"I didn't know (he was executed). I came here to perform the hajj and I'm not paying attention to anything else," said Mohammad Abdullah Ghanem, a 45-year-old Yemeni, before muttering the Muslim expression of mourning.
Many other pilgrims said they had been too absorbed in the rituals of the hajj, which began on Thursday, to know what was going on elsewhere in the world.
"God knows," said Syrian Ezzeddin Mussa when asked if he thought it had been fair to execute Saddam, who was hanged in Baghdad early Saturday after being sentenced to death for killing 148 people in a Shiite village in the 1980s.
A woman among the Iraqi contingent of pilgrims said this was no time to talk politics.
"Today is devoted to worshipping God and I have no intention of going into issues pertaining to human beings," she said.
But other Iraqi pilgrims were more forthcoming, reflecting the divisions at home where Shiites persecuted under Saddam's 24-year rule feted his end and Sunni Arabs mourned his passing.
"Any unjust person receives the punishment (he deserves)," said Mahmud Muin Jaber, a 50-year-old resident of the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
"This is the fate of those who torture and repress their peoples," said another Iraqi pilgrim who identified himself only as a native of Karbala, another Shiite holy city.
"God rest his soul. God knows better about the conditions of human beings, and he is a president," said a 54-year-old Baghdad resident who gave his name as Abu Abdullah when asked if he thought Saddam had been wronged.
"In general the Iraqis are divided: Shiites hate him and Sunnis love him," he said.
The pilgrims flocked to Mina near the Muslim holy city of Mecca on Saturday to begin the risky ritual of stoning pillars representing Satan and celebrate the first day of Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice.
Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie denied that Saddam was executed on Eid al-Adha, a timing which some observers in the region believe might inflame Muslim feelings.
"Eid starts from daylight -- we had managed to execute him well before the sunrise," Rubaie told CNN.
12/30/2006 12:54 GMT
