'Saddam Hussein Hanged for the Wrong Reason.
Gwynne Dyer, Arab News.
It was not the Iraqi government but its American masters that chose to execute Saddam Hussein in a great rush as soon as the first sentence was confirmed, thus canceling all the other trials on far graver charges that awaited him. The current Iraqi government had nothing to hide if those trials went ahead; the United States government did.
Cast your mind back to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Washington’s pretext for war then was Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, with barely a word about bringing democracy to the downtrodden Iraqi people. But in order to persuade us that Saddam’s WMD were a threat to the whole world, we were told a lot about how wicked he was, how he had even “gassed his own people.”
Well, there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction, so now the script has been changed to say that the war was about bringing democracy to Iraq. But that still requires Saddam Hussein to be a monstrous villain (which he certainly was), and it needs some dramatic supporting stories about how he abused his own people, like his poison gas attacks on rebel Kurds in 1988. So let’s try him for the slaughter of the Kurds in 1988, and then we’ll hang him.
Fair enough, and the trial for the gassing of the Kurds actually got started a couple of months ago. Other trials, for his savage repression of the Kurdish revolt in 1988 and the Shiite revolt in 1991, were already scheduled to happen in the New Year. But none of that came to pass. All the other trials have been cancelled, and they actually hanged Saddam for the judicial murder of 144 villagers in the town of Dujail who were allegedly involved in a plot to kill him in 1982.
Dujail? Here is a man who began his career in power in the late 1960s by exterminating the entire (mostly Shia) leadership of the Communist party in Iraq, went on to launch an invasion of Iran in 1980 that cost up to half a million lives, massacred his own Kurdish population in 1987-88 when some of their leaders sided with the Iranians, invaded Kuwait in 1990, and massacred Iraqi Shiites in 1991 when they rebelled against his rule at the end of that war. And they hanged him for Dujail?'
Lees verder: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=90555
1 opmerking:
Het is allemaal nog veel erger..
Saddam opgehangen door infiltranten'
Niet de beulenploeg die door het Iraakse ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken was aangewezen, maar buitenstaanders hebben de Iraakse oud-dictator Saddam Hoessein opgehangen, na de executieruimte te hebben 'geïnfiltreerd'.
Dat heeft een hoge functionaris van het ministerie woensdag gezegd. Volgens hem is de executie uitgevoerd door 'milities en buitenstaanders', die de ploeg van het ministerie aan de kant schoven.
Ook de Nationale Veiligheidsadviseur Mowaffaq al-Rubaie zegt dat er sprake was van 'een infiltratie in de executieruimte'. Volgens hem zouden de buitenstaanders met deze daad de sektarische spanningen in Irak hebben willen aanwakkeren.
'Walgelijk'
Al-Rubaie noemde de executie van Saddam 'zeer onprofessioneel', 'walgelijk' en zei dat de ophanging op deze manier 'nooit had mogen gebeuren'.
Dinsdag zei de enige aanwezige aanklager bij de executie, Munkith al-Faroon, dat hij had gedreigd weg te gaan als het bespotten en beschimpen van de ex-president niet zou stoppen. Volgens de Iraakse wet mag een executie niet doorgaan als er geen aanklagers aanwezig zijn als getuigen.
elsevier.nl
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