Hello. What's This?

Iran called on Iraq on Tuesday to carry out its death sentence on Saddam Hussein, saying the former dictator who waged an eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s was a criminal who deserved to die.

"We hope the fair, correct and legal verdict against this criminal ... is enforced," government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told a news conference.

The fact that they want him to be hung is not a surprise.  The fact that they'd say it publicly and in so doing, albeit in an oblique way, confer praise on those responsible for his ousting and capture, is...strange.  We know they want sharia in Iraq, which means that the US/coalition forces have to be beaten.  Yet they support the hanging of Saddam, who himself has been supported by the insurgents who are fighting the westerners who do not want to see sharia rule in Iraq.

That does not compute.

An Iraqi appeal court is expected to rule on the guilty verdict and death sentence by the middle of January.

"He is a criminal dictator. No doubt about it," Elham said of Saddam. "We hope no pressure will be applied not to carry out this verdict."

In Vienna on Tuesday, the United Nations' special investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, said he disagreed with the death sentence and that Saddam's trial had not been well conducted.

"Even a person like Saddam Hussein should not be sentenced to death," said Nowak, who acknowledged that Saddam's regime had killed and tortured many political opponents and members of minorities.

The EU has welcomed the verdict but also said Saddam should not be put to death.

The Iranian spokesman said his government hoped Saddam would continue to be tried for other alleged crimes against humanity, including his invading Iran in 1980, starting a war that killed more than a million Iranians and Iraqis.

The suffering and losses in the war, which ended in 1988, are well remembered in Iran.

Elham rejected the suggestion that the execution of Saddam, a Sunni Muslim, would escalate the violence between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni communities.

"It is very clear that such a suggestion is mischief-making. Saddam has both Shiite and Sunni blood on his hands. His very existence is anti-human," he said.

His existence is anti-human?

Oh, would we not like to be able to interview Gholam Elham!

Gholam, can we tawk?

What does it mean to be human?

Also, pls discuss the following:

Mercy, justice, do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you, love thy neighbor, logic, internal consistency, goodness, evil, faith, love, hope, charity, and your favorite books of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Addendum:

Palestinians Protest Saddam Death Sentence, Threaten Reprisals Against Foreigners
Carrying pictures of Saddam Hussein, about 250 schoolgirls in the West Bank town of Jenin paraded Monday in protest at the death sentence handed down by a Baghdad court which found him guilty of crimes against humanity. The children chanted, "Beloved Saddam, strike Tel Aviv," the same slogan shouted by jubilant Palestinians when Iraqi rockets slammed into Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.
    In the Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis, masked gunmen from a group calling itself Arafat's Army threatened reprisals against foreign citizens in the Palestinian territories if the sentence against Saddam is carried out: "We warn all foreigners in the Gaza Strip, especially the Americans, that they will be kidnapped and killed in front of witnesses."  (AP/International Herald Tribune)