Two
More Barbaric State
Executions In Iraq
By James Cogan
17 January 2007
World
Socialist Web
The
latest executions in Baghdad exemplify the barbarism that prevails in
US-occupied Iraq. Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, the 56-year-old half-brother
of Saddam Hussein and former head of his regime’s intelligence
service, and Awad Hamed al-Bander, the 61-year-old former chief judge
of the Baathist Revolutionary Court, were hung in the early hours of
Monday morning.
American troops woke the
two men in the dead of night and flew them by helicopter to the execution
chamber in Baghdad. Masked Iraqi executioners bundled them to dimly
lit gallows, shackled, disorientated and dressed in the infamous orange
prison uniforms issued by the US military. At 3a.m., they were hooded,
nooses put around their necks and dropped to their deaths. Whether on
purpose or due to incompetence, the hangman rigged the rope in such
a manner that it tore off Barzan’s head. Horrifying video footage
allegedly showed his decapitated body lying on the ground in a pool
of blood, as Bander’s corpse swayed above. Their families claim
they were not informed of the executions and only found about the deaths
from the television news.
The executions took place
just over two weeks after the hanging of Saddam Hussein, which had the
character of a sectarian lynching. Members of the Shiite fundamentalist
parties that dominate the US puppet government chanted Shiite slogans
and insulted the former dictator as he stood on the gallows. Spokesmen
for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have claimed that Barzan and
Bander were not subjected to the same indignities, but the political
purpose was the same. The Maliki government ordered their execution
in a bid to shore up its waning support among Shiites oppressed under
the Sunni-based Baathist regime. Maliki ignored calls by Iraqi president
Jalal Talabani, the UN and human rights organisations for a stay of
execution.
Sunni Arabs have responded
to the killings with anger. Some 3,000 people assembled for the men’s
burial near Hussein’s own grave in his home city of Tikrit. A
banner on the main mosque declared: “The people of Tikrit mourn
the two martyrs killed by sectarian hands.” The beheading of Barzan
intensified the bitterness. Barzan’s son-in-law denounced the
mutilation as “the grudge of the Safavids”—a term
used to denigrate Shiites as stooges of Iran.
In Shiite and Kurdish areas
of Iraq, the reaction to the executions was generally muted. Among many
people, there is a growing awareness that such barbaric acts of revenge
have nothing to do with genuine justice for the many Iraqis who suffered
under the Baathists. A Shiite interviewed by Associated Press in Mosul
told the newsagency: “What they’ve done incites people to
sectarianism even more. Whether they were executed or not, what’s
the use?”
The Bush administration gave
the green light for the hangings as a clear warning that it is prepared
to physically dispose of anyone who gets in the way of US plans for
global hegemony. At the same time, the White House had hoped the trial
and execution of Hussein and his colleagues for crimes against humanity
would give a veneer of legitimacy to the illegal US occupation of Iraq.
Instead, the political murders
of powerless and largely broken prisoners—Barzan, for example,
was dying of spinal cancer—have served only to evoke disgust among
millions of people around the world and reinforce their view that the
entire US operation in Iraq is criminal to the core. Even Bush has felt
compelled to distance himself from Hussein’s hanging, describing
it yesterday as “fumbled”.
The trial of Hussein, Barzan,
Bander and five others has become another debacle for the White House.
In international legal and human rights circles, it has been widely
assessed as a kangaroo court and a travesty. A judge was removed for
allowing defendants to speak too much and three defence attorneys were
assassinated—most likely by pro-occupation death squads.
The prosecution of Saddam
Hussein and a few of his inner circle for the 1982 killing of 148 Shiites
in the village of Dujail was not motivated by concerns for justice.
Rather the restriction of the trial to this atrocity was deliberately
designed to block evidence of Washington’s long association with
Hussein and its direct involvement in the crimes of his regime. US administrations
backed the Baathist massacres of Communist Party members in the 1960s
and 1970s, supported Hussein in his war against Iran in the 1980s, and
deliberately turned a blind eye to his suppression of Shiite and Kurdish
opponents.
The US occupation drew up
the legislation under which Hussein was tried. The law included the
death penalty and the stipulation that it be carried out within 30 days
of the first and final appeal being rejected. Hussein’s guilty
verdict for the Dujail killings therefore guaranteed he would take embarrassing
details of his relations with the US to his grave.
Kurdish nationalist leaders
who have fully collaborated with the US invasion have been forced to
publicly condemn Hussein’s speedy execution. Mahmoud Othman, a
Kurdish parliamentarian, stated earlier this month: “It was very
important to keep him alive so that we could know the full details of
what happened during all the atrocities that were committed. We need
to know how and why he did what he did and who helped him by providing
political and material support to his regime.”
Like Shiite politicians,
Kurdish leaders had planned to try Hussein for the repression of Kurds
in the so-called Anfal campaign of the 1980s in order to bolster their
own tenuous credibility among the Kurdish masses. As a result of his
execution, all other charges against Hussein have had to be dropped.
The reality of what is taking
place outside the courtroom doors made the executions even more of an
outrage. The US invasion is responsible for a level of death and destruction
that exceeds the most nightmarish periods of Hussein’s rule. Tens
of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or imprisoned. The US military
has levelled entire cities in its attempt to crush resistance to the
occupation.
The Bush administration’s
policy of promoting Shiite and Kurdish factions at the expense of Sunni
Arabs has unleashed vicious sectarian warfare. At least 650,000 Iraqis
have lost their lives under the US occupation. The violence has turned
more than 2.5 million Iraqis into refugees.
On Sunday alone, police found
40 mutilated corpses in different parts of Baghdad. Many had been tortured
before being murdered. The main city morgue alone processed over 16,000
unidentified murder victims in 2006, most of whom are believed to have
been killed by death squads operated by the predominantly Shiite security
forces. In the five boroughs of New York, by contrast, with a population
far larger than Baghdad, there were 579 homicides last year.
The escalation of the Iraq
war ordered by President Bush last week will lead to tens of thousands
more deaths—both Iraqi and American. There are clear signs the
administration is also preparing for war with Syria and Iran as well,
which would drive the death toll into the millions.
The Bush administration and
its political allies such as Britain’s Tony Blair and Australia’s
John Howard have no right to prosecute anyone. Rather they should be
in the dock. They are responsible for an illegal war of aggression and
mass killing in Iraq and should be held to account for their war crimes.
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