07.01.2007

Saddam Hussein, the deposed president of Iraq, was hanged in front of cameras on Dec. 30, 2006 before dawn in Baghdad for his crimes against humanity.

He was slaughtered while President George W. Bush slept and later called it “a fair trial.” He was a sacrifice for his unforgivable sins, against his own people, just before the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice, clutching a copy of the Koran in his hands. He was calm and collected at the gallows as he challenged the kangaroo court set up for him that generated no justice, confidence or trust either locally or internationally.

The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hanged him ostensibly to demonstrate their powerless power and to intimidate the Iraqi insurgency. Saddam had become the symbol of that growing Sunni revolt. They hanged him to underline that the Maliki government under orders can be as ruthless as Saddam was during his reign. It was a dark episode of the tragedy of Iraq that will further inflame the Iraqi chaos.

The kangaroo court in Baghdad sentenced the fallen leader of Iraq for the last three decades to hang. Since the beginning of the legal proceedings, there was international opposition and criticism that Saddam, as the defunct president of Iraq, should not be tried in an Iraqi court by Iraqi prosecutors and Iraqi judges because this would not convince the international community of the impartiality of the judgment. But instincts of nationalism and the choice of the victors, the United States, prevailed, even though they knew from the beginning it was a mistake.

There exists an International Criminal Court (ICC), which would have been the right address, although the United States, like some other countries, does not recognize its jurisdiction. As another alternative, a special court like that in Nuremberg could have been established with independent legal authority with the participation of independent prosecutors and judges. These alternatives were brushed aside for an Iraqi court -- inexperienced, unsure of itself with clumsy, unbecoming judges who did not fill their shoes with respectability. Whatever was shown on the TV screen publicly gave no credence to the legitimacy of the court.

On the contrary, the court proceedings gave the opposite impression, that it was the court of the victor and it was a charade as the death verdict had been decided from the beginning and the sitting was just cosmetic. The defense lawyers were ambushed, intimidated, killed or forced to leave the courtroom. Saddam and the rest of the accused were not treated with the usual court protocol but rather were continually denigrated. The decision how to treat him when captured must have been made in advance, ahead of time. As it was a war against Saddam, he should have been killed when captured, as his sons were, which would have avoided this impossible situation today.

The Iraq Constitution has written off capital punishment, but in order to mete and carry out these death sentences it was reimposed for these defendants.

The civilized world is now categorically against the death penalty, which has been written out of nearly all constitutions except for some 30 states in the United States. The argument against capital punishment is that it is based on a despicable sense of vengeance by the state on behalf of the people and that history has proven that the irreversible verdict has sometimes later turned out to have been wrong.

This uncivilized and unceremonious act, this tit-for-tat, violence against violence, will encourage and breed more violence, Sunni against Shiite and vice versa in response.

Iraq in the abyss gained nothing with tyrannical Saddam's blood but invited more chaos with this barbaric act, as a hollow triumph for the shaky government, universally condemned by the civilized world.

Turkey, since 2001, has banned capital punishment even for crimes committed during wartime. Yet the official neutral statement to the effect that it is “a domestic affair of Iraq” was not in line with strong EU disapproval. Turkey hanged, in historic shame, its Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Finance Minister Hasan Polatkan on Sept. 16, 1961 only to shed crocodile tears decades later, elevating them to martyrs of democracy and popular heroes in the Turkish context.

If you wanted to hang Saddam Hussein, you should have asked the 30 million Iraqis in a referendum whether they agreed with the court's decision. No government in Iraq today, in the middle of a civil war, would take such a political risk, so it is impossible even to think of democratic referenda.

Iraq is so divided, so full of ethnic and religious hatred that there are already many who think it was a mistake to topple Saddam, who had kept Iraq intact, albeit with an iron fist, inhumane and dictatorial. Without the despotic rule of Saddam, Iraq is in chaos, and the alternative to some is to find another Saddam. The hanging of Saddam will no doubt precipitate the chaotic divide and reign of terror. One final remark, inspired in principle, is that it is not society that gives life to the individual, and consequently it cannot take the life it has not given. Not hanging him would not have meant that his crimes, which were political, were forgiven, but instead would have been an act of benevolence to spare his life for the good of Iraq.