KUALA LUMPUR, 2 January 2007 — Malaysia’s former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, yesterday slammed the execution of Saddam Hussein as barbaric, sadistic and a public murder.

“If we support human rights and justice, we must condemn this barbaric lynching of Saddam Hussein,” Mahathir, a vocal critic of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, said in a statement issued through national news agency Bernama.

He said the “sadistic act” of broadcasting the former Iraqi president’s execution to the world was a travesty of justice designed to demonstrate the imperial power of the United States.

The broadcast served as a warning that people must either bow to the dictates of US President George W. Bush’s administration or face the consequences of a public lynching, he said.

“There can be no excuse whatsoever for this injustice under any circumstances,” said Mahathir, who stepped down as prime minister in 2003.

Mahathir, who is also a member of the International Committee for the Defense of Saddam, said his execution was also an insult to all Muslims as it occurred during Haj when Muslims devote themselves to prayer and forgiveness.

“It is all too clear that the war criminal Bush has no sensitivities whatsoever for Muslims on their pilgrimage to Makkah. This barbaric act is a sacrilege,” he said.

He said the entire Saddam trial process was a mockery of justice. “Yet, we are told that Iraq was invaded to promote democracy, freedom and justice,” he said.

He noted that over 500,000 Iraqi children died during the years of UN economic sanctions after the first Gulf War in 1991, and that findings by the medical journal, Lancet, revealed that over 650,000 Iraqis had died since the US invasion. Mahathir blamed the deaths on Bush.

“If President Saddam Hussein is guilty of war crimes,” then the world must find Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard “equally guilty,” he said, urging the International Criminal Court to “prosecute these war criminals.”

In Iraq, hundreds of supporters of Saddam, many of them armed, protested yesterday his execution and blamed leading Iraqi politicians for carrying it out.

The protesters marched through Ad-Dawr, the village north of Baghdad where Saddam was captured by US troops in December 2003 not far from his home village of Awja where he is buried, firing guns in the air and carrying large posters of the late leader.

In the nearby town of Tikrit, dozens of mourning tents were erected for the late leader even as the town was sealed off for a third straight day by security forces fearing angry reprisals for the execution.

Mourners sat in tents as volunteers served out coffee. Hundreds of them sidestepped a vehicle ban to walk to his grave and pay their last respects in Awja where Saddam was privately buried Sunday.

Saddam was hanged before dawn Saturday after an Iraqi court found him guilty of crimes against humanity for his role in the killing of 148 Shiite civilians after an assassination attempt against him in 1982. Footage of Saddam’s final minutes showed him being taunted by his executioners.