Details of the events were publicised on 28 July 1979, and Iraqi media began accusing Syria of backing the alleged plot. Syrian Ba'athists responded by denying any relations to the coup plotters. On August 8, the Iraqi News Agency announced that twenty-one of the twenty-two Iraqis were executed by firing squad for "their part in a plot to overthrow Iraq's new president". The twenty-second man was condemned to death in absentia because he was "nowhere to be found", the agency said.  A tape of the assembly and of the executions was distributed throughout the country. "On an August afternoon in 1979, his face tense and somber, Saddam Hussein from the balcony of the presidential palace in Baghdad "informed a chanting crowd of 50,000 supporters "that he had just witnessed the punishment the state court had ordered for 21 of those men: They had been executed by a firing squad. The crowd cheered".BEHIND IRAQ'S BOLD BID, by Claudia Wright, 26 October 1980, The New York Times.
