And To Further Confuse The Issue...
Capital punishment for a capital offense. Thousands of innocent men, women, children heartlessly gassed to death, murdered for the offense of giving offense to Saddam Hussein. As sadistic atrocities go, this one stands right up there at the top of the list. Little wonder that Iraq's Kurds - Kurds everywhere - held such a burning hatred for this man. And, of course, his indispensable henchmen, those whose loyalty to the arch dictator ensured his would be done.The infamous "Chemical Ali", Ali Hassan al-Majid, Sultan Hashim al-Tai, the defence minister, and the armed forces deputy chief of operations, Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti. What an odious threesome, a trio of unrepentant murders without peer. Who will mourn their passing other than their immediate families? They underwent legal trials, accused of genocide against ethnic Kurds. The evidence was there, the crime indisputable, raw, merciless.
They were sentenced to hang, under Iraqi law. Of course, under the Iraqi system of jurisprudence and execution some fairly grotesque, gory and gruesome accounts of previous such state-sanctioned avenging actions passing for justice give pause for thought. But this is an sovereign country - no matter its state of civic disarray and social malfunction - with a fully autonomous system of justice.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is determined that the three be executed in expiation for their inhumanely insane acts of state revenge against a helpless population. "We will not be swayed from our determination to ensure that the sentences are carried out." The U.S. Embassy, it would appear, has thus far prevented the handing-over of the three condemned men still held in U.S. military custody.
Perplexing that, at the very least, since in the United States of America capital punishment is meted out by many of the states in the union. So, the punishment fitting the crime; the slaughter of thousands of Kurdish people resulting in the apprehension, imprisonment, trial and judgemental sentencing of the three political-elite malefactors.
Here's the divine irony in the situation. President Jalal Talabani, himself an ethnic Kurd, along with Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, steadfastly refuse to sign the execution order. And unless and until such signed order is received by the U.S. military, it refuses to hand the men over. It requires legal authorization from the government of Iraq.
Mr. Talabani, more power to him as a principled human being of the highest order in this regard, is opposed on principle to state-sanctioned murder posing as capital punishment. Mr. al-Hashemi's doubts are of a more practical nature, fearing that the executions could ignite protests imperilling already-delicate reconciliation efforts between factions.
And there, for now, the matter stands. But not for long.
Labels: Justice, Middle East, Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Monday, November 12, 2007
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