IRAQ: FIVE SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR KILLING HEAD OF SADDAM’S TRIBE

November 2, 2009: five men were sentenced to death in Iraq for murdering the head of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni tribe, the victim’s son told AFP.
“The special criminal court in Salaheddin issued a death sentence on the five convicts who killed my father,” said Manaf al-Nida, son of Sheikh Ali al-Nida.
Manaf al-Nida said that one of the men sentenced to death was an Egyptian man who worked for his father.
Sheikh Ali al-Nida and his driver were killed after insurgents planted a bomb in their car which exploded between the town of Tikrit and Saddam’s birthplace of Awja.
Nida was the head of the Al-Baijat tribe whose home turf is in and around the province of Salaheddin, of which Tikrit is the capital.
He was a member of a delegation representing Saddam’s tribe who collected the ousted leader’s body after his execution in December 2006 for burial in Awja. (Sources: AFP, 02/11/2009)