Braced for the worst

last updated 8 January 2015

Amman, Jordan

In a letter from prison, Saddam Hussein portrays himself as a martyr for the Arab cause and says he’s resigned to being executed. “My soul and my existence is to be sacrificed for our precious Palestine and our beloved, patient, and suffering Iraq,” Hussein writes in the letter to a friend, which was published in two Jordanian newspapers. The ousted dictator is due to stand trial this fall for a variety of atrocities against the Iraqi people—including the 1982 massacre in a Shiite village—and faces the death penalty if convicted. In defiant, flowery language typical of his speeches, Hussein writes that he has readied himself for death. “Life is meaningless,” Saddam said, “without the considerations of faith, love, and inherited history in our nation.”