SADDAM HUSSEIN. DALAI LAMA WANTS SADDAM SPARED

Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama appealed for Saddam Hussein’s life to be spared, saying the deposed Iraqi president was not beyond redemption.
“The death penalty is said to fulfil a preventive function, yet it is clearly a form of revenge,” the Nobel peace laureate told reporters as he ended a two-week visit to Japan.
“However horrible an act a person may have committed, everyone has the potential to improve and correct himself,” he said.
“I hope that in the case of Saddam Hussein, as with all others, that human life will be respected and spared.”
An Iraqi court sentenced Saddam, ousted in a US-led invasion in 2003, to hang on November 5 for the deaths of 148 Shiites in an Iraqi village in 1982, after an attempt to assassinate him.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki has said he expected Saddam to be hanged before the end of the year.