Saddam’s Hanging: Metamorphosis of Justice and a Mockery of Human Rights
By Ezat Mossallanejad
On Sunday November 5, 2006, the former Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court in a politicized trial. Fifty six days later, he was executed by hanging in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah (Friday, December 29, 2006), amidst jeers and insults. “The humiliating way Saddam´s execution was carried out clearly violated human rights law,” commented Philip Alston, an independent expert with the UN Human Rights Council. Even President George W. Bush conceded that Saddam could have been hanged in a more dignified way.
Like all instances where the death penalty is imposed, Saddam’s hanging, with its vengeful overtones, was an exhibition of barbarism. Carried out at the start of Eid al-Adha, a holy day for all Moslems, the execution saddened many Moslems. Prior to his death the condemned men was submitted by his guards and those who attended his execution to degrading treatment prohibited under Article 16 of the UN Convention against Torture. While Saddam was led to the scaffold, prayers rang out in a chorus from all sides: “May peace be upon Prophet Mohammed and his descendents!” Some members of the audience shouted the Arabic word “Jahanam” (hell), warning the former dictator of tortures awaiting him after death. It was reported that some guards damned Saddam and told him that he had destroyed them.
Thousands of people watched the video of Saddam’s hanging through the Internet or Al-Jazeera TV. For some, it brought back painful and traumatizing memories. A client of the CCVT, herself the victim of Saddam, said that she cried for a long time after watching the footage. EXPLAIN WHY
The execution was hailed by President George Bush as “a milestone on the road to Iraqi democracy.” Alas! A government that is on the road to democracy should do away with all remnants of an oppressive past, including the death penalty.
International attempts to bring criminals like Saddam Hussein to justice began with the historic Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. On October 1, 1946, the Nuremberg trial passed its verdict against Nazi leaders who were responsible for horrible torture, death, the extermination of millions of innocent people and the destruction of civilizations built by humankind over the course of centuries. Out of 22 criminals who stood trial, 11 were hanged. More than sixty years have passed since then and humanity has come a long way in terms of human rights. Today, both torture and the death penalty are absolutely prohibited by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The death penalty is also prohibited under the Second Optional Protocol to the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and is outlawed in Europe under the European Convention on Human Rights. The number of countries that have abolished the death penalty are on the rise and international law is gradually moving towards its abolition. In this context, Sadam’s vengeful and cruel hanging is a regression towards a barbarous past.
It is sometimes argued that the death penalty is the only way to hold those who commit genocide, torture, and other gross human rights abuses accountable for their crimes. Yet we should not forget that Saddam was not merely an individual acting in isolation. He created a complex system of terror and coercion the remnants of which exist to this day. Saddam’s execution removed the main witness to his ghoulish crimes. According to an observer, “with the death of Saddam, the secrets that could have emerged at the Halabja trial will probably never come to light. His death will be a relief to those in America who feared being exposed for having aided Saddam as he murdered so many of his countrymen.” (The Toronto Star, Dec. 31, 2006).
The CCVT has served hundreds of Iraqi, Arab and Iranian clients who have suffered under Saddam’s reign of terror. We have recorded cases of mass murders of entire families, maltreatment of prisoners of war, kidnapping and disappearances, brutal torture of political prisoners including merciless beatings, mutilation, burning, water immersion, electric shock, mock executions, beheadings, sexual abuse and rape, confinement in deadly concentration camps, assassinations and religious persecution. It might be argued that with Saddam’s hanging, his victims would heave a sigh of relief knowing that their suffering has at last been recognized. Alas for that illusion!
Saddam Hussein was tried only for the massacre of 148 Shia Moslems in the Iraqi town of Dujail in 1982. The incident was presented worldwide as an internal Iraqi affair related to Shiites. Saddam’s hasty hanging effectively brought to an end not only his life but also a second international trial he had been involved in since August 2006. In that case, Saddam and six co-defendants were charged with committing genocide during the Anfal military operations against Iraqi Kurds by using chemical and biological weapons. The victims of those operations will never now see justice.
Saddam will also never now be tried for the multiple other crimes of an international nature which he committed during 26 years of tyrannical rule. What follows is merely a brief outline of some of the dictator’s better known excesses:
• Saddam Hussein ascended to power by waging a coup against Al-bakr (to whom he was Deputy President) in July 1979. On August 18, 1979, Saddam ordered the massacre of 21 high-ranking members of the ruling Bath Party. He personally shot some with his pistol.
• Over the course of his ominous reign of terror, Saddam murdered 40 of his close relatives including his brothers-in-law.
• Saddam waged a war of aggression against Iran on September 22, 1980 that continued for 8 years, resulting in the death of more than one million and the maiming of a similar number of people from both sides. According to the Iranian documents, Saddam first used chemical weapons against Iran on 13 January 1981 and continued to do so over the course of the war,
• During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam used chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve poisons, from 1983 to 1988, against both Iraqi Kurds and the Iranians. Some 30,000 people died as a result. His crime of genocide against Iraqi Kurds led to the destruction of 2,000 Kurdish villages and in total killed at least 50,000 Kurds, with some estimates reaching 200,000.
• On August 20, 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait and instigated the Gulf War that continued for 46 days. Before withdrawing from Kuwait on 16 January 1991, Iraqi forces set fire to the Kuwaiti oil wells creating an environmental hazard that continues up to the present time. In the course of Iraqi occupation of Kuwait some 20,000 people were killed and around 100,000 lost their lives as a result of war.
• At the end of the Gulf War, Saddam suppressed the movement of Iraqi Kurds for autonomy, as a result of which 30,000 people lost their lives and many more thousands were forced to flee across Turkish and Iranian borders. The closure of borders by the government of Turkey led to the death of 1000 people, mostly children, per day.
From a purely political perspective Saddam’s execution was disasterous. It fanned the fuel of Iraq’s sectarian violence between the Shiite majority and those Sunni Arabs who support the tyrant. Within hours of Saddam’s death, at least 80 people were killed and dozens wounded in three bombings.
Far from serving a human rights ideal, Saddam’s hanging turned a monstrous tyrant into a martyr of mythical stature. Some in Sunni-dominated Tikrit lamented Saddam’s death: “The president, the leader Saddam Hussein, is a Martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died, the death of a holy warrior,” declared Sheikh Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at Saddam’s mosque (The Toronto Star, Sunday December 31, 2006, p. A-2).
If Saddam ought not to have been executed, how then could we have brought this notorious criminal to justice? The answer lies in international cooperation.
Although the International Criminal Court (ICC) did not have jurisdiction to try Saddam, it was quite possible to establish an ah-hoc international tribunal for his trial through the UN Security Council. Unfortunately, a multilateral solution was never sought for Iraq. Saddam was tried in a closed-door court to hide US complicity in his crimes. An international trial could have exposed the role of the U.S. administration and its allies, other Arab regimes, and the Iranian government in genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the war with Iran (at which time Saddam was still a US ally) and later in Kuwait.
Saddam’s execution is surely not the only instance in history when justice took a back seat to the political interests of powerful nations. Yet it is disturbing that the government of Canada remains silent in the face of Saddam’s execution, an execution that contravened human rights norms and forever denied justice to millions of Saddam’s victims. In 1988, Canada resisted pressures from the U.S government and joined most European countries at the UN Sub-Committee on Human Rights to condemn Saddam’s regime for the massacre of the Iraqi Kurds in Halabja. It is particularly sad, then, that nearly twenty years later our country lacks the courage to yet again stand up to the US and condemn this travesty of justice.
With Saddam’s death many secrets will never be revealed. The vicious oppressor and tormenter died as an innocent victim. Canada was a disappointment as it did not raise its voice against the capital punishment and allowed justice to be distorted. The transformation of justice is perhaps a frightening warning of the direction our humanity is evolving in.