Monday, January 15, 2007



More judicial murder in Iraq

Iraq has executed two more of Saddam's accomplices - Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad Hamad al-Bandar. Both were undoubtedly bad men guilty of numerous atrocities - but like Saddam, neither deserved death. Neither did al-Tikriti deserve the mutilation inflicted upon him by the hangman (and there is no doubt it was deliberate - Iraq uses long-drop hanging, which has sadly been refined down to a precise science through long practice. The only way you decapitate someone by that method is if you intend to). But this is George Bush's new, modern Iraq - barbarity piled upon barbarity, a little Texas in Mesopotamia, complete with its own death penalty and Ku Klux Klan-style death squads.

When Saddam and his accomplices murdered the victims of Dujail, they claimed to be acting under colour of law. Those carrying out sentence today are no different. But hopefully they won't face the same fate.

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