So the line grows of Iraqis volunteering to hang Saddam Hussein. You may assume this will be a rare act in the new Iraq, a singular national death sentence, an extraordinary happening. You'd be wrong. The regime supported by American lives, by American blood, by American treasure is a massive machine of civil murder. In short, our billions tie the hangman's noose for hundreds of Iraqis convicted in courts reconstituted by American lawyers. On the jump of Kirk Semple's Hussein piece in the Times today:
The death penalty in Iraq, which applies to a range of crimes including terrorism and certain categories of murder, was suspended in 2003 by the American occupation authorities but reinstated in August 2004. Since then, 51 people — men and several women — have been hanged and about 170 are currently on death row awaiting execution or the outcome of their appeal, according to Hashim al-Shibli, Iraq’s justice minister.
Those are the official numbers. The high-ranking government official involved in the executions process said the actual number of hangings was far higher, though fewer than 100, because of three sets of hangings that took place between December 2005 and March 2006 and were never publicized.
Human rights groups have questioned the transparency of the criminal justice system in Iraq and the ability of defendants to get a fair trial.
Hangings. Paid for by Americans. By the dozens. This is the new democracy? We're hanging one barbarian, while another sits in the justice ministry - presumably standing up while we stand down. Do the neocons approve of this:
Death is supposed to come instantly — a doctor is on hand to certify it — and the bodies are removed to a cooler where they are held before being handed over to the victims’ families. The entire process is recorded by a photographer and a video cameraman and the images are stored in a government archive.
But the hangings have not always gone smoothly.
Until the new gallows were built, the Iraqi government used an apparatus and an old rope left over from Mr. Hussein’s government, said the high-ranking government official. The rope had become so elastic that it would sometimes take as much as eight minutes to kill the convicted person.
On Sept. 6, the Iraqi authorities planned to hang 27 people. On the 13th hanging, according to an official who was there, the rope snapped and the convicted man plummeted 15 feet through the trap door onto the concrete floor. “God saved me!” the man cried. “God is great! I did not deserve this!” For an hour, he lay on the ground praying and shouting while prison guards and the executioner debated whether this constituted divine intervention and, if so, whether the man’s life should be spared. Once a new rope was rigged, however, the man was forced up the stairs once again and successfully hanged.
Time's special report two weeks ago detailed a surge in hangings by our partners in the new Iraq:
An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says the government plans to execute "two or three more batches of 14 or 15 each" in the coming months...."From the Iraqi point of view," says al-Maliki's adviser, "they don't like to see a lot of people get killed every day and have a low number of executions."
Who built the Iraqi gallows? We did:
Hangings are conducted in secret, at a heavily fortified location in Baghdad built by an American contractor.
In short, one of the most horrible postscripts in this horrible war is the assembly line of hangings we've helped to create in Iraq. I guess it will make a nice exhibit in the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Research Center.
