An Iraqi lights a cigarette with a lighter in the shape of a statue of Saddam Hussein holding a gun (Sarah Arar/AFP/Getty Images)
Posted on 12/28/2006 1:38:18 AM PST by alnitak
Hundreds of Iraqis have offered to act as hangman in the execution of Saddam Hussein, according to senior officials in the Baghdad Government.
Some requests have been e-mailed to the office of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, from around the world. Mr al-Maliki has also been directly petitioned by government officials who want to place the noose around Saddam’s neck.
Many ordinary Justice Ministry employees are too terrified to carry out an execution, fearing reprisals from the dead man’s family. Those who do volunteer to act as the executioner may well have lost a relative to violence in the post-Saddam era or had a relative killed by Saddam’s regime.
Saddam lost his appeal on Tuesday against the death sentence for killing 148 Shia from the village of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt. In a letter published on a website yesterday he vowed to go to the gallows a true martyr and said he was ready to die as a sacrifice for his country.
The ruling, from a nine-judge appeals court, requires Saddam to be killed within 30 days. The timing remains uncertain, although preparations are likely to be interrupted by the four-day religious holiday of Eid al-Adha, which begins at the weekend.
The machinery for the execution is in place because about 90 prisoners, both Sunni and Shia, have been executed in Iraq since 2004. Saddam is likely to be led to the gallows dressed in an orange prison uniform, his head covered by a cone-shaped black hood.
Saddam, who is being held in a high-security prison in the confines of the Baghdad airport compound, will begin his final hours before a panel of three or four judges. According to an Iraqi government official who has witnessed state exectuions, one of the judges informs the prisoner that he has the right to write a will and leave letters for relatives. The judges will ask him if he wants to confess to anything or ask forgiveness.
The inmate is then led to a special cell called the waiting room to prepare for his death. He can pray, drink water, smoke cigarettes, work on his will, write instruction on where he should be buried and leave letters for his relatives. The guards will also bring him his last meal. “The prisoners will try to drag it out three or four hours but then finally they just want to get it done,” the official said. “Sometimes, they have pushed it back a day.”
When the prisoner is ready, three or four guards place the hood over his face, guide him to the gallows chamber and lead him up about eight steps on to a metal platform where the hangman waits. The hangman also wears a black hood, which has slits for his eyes.
He lowers the noose around the prisoner’s head. The hangman shifts a lever and a metal trap door screeches open. Otherwise, there is only silence as the man drops 15ft through the trap door. “He dies immediately, so he does not suffer. A doctor comes and checks the heartbeat to make sure he is dead. They lower the body to the ground and cover it with a white cloth, put it on a stretcher and then it is taken to the hospital,” the official said.
Although Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay, are buried in the family’s tribal cemetery near Tikrit, it is unclear what will happen to his body. He may be buried in secret to prevent the site becoming a scene of reverence or retribution.
More than 160 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the conflict in 2003, the International Federation of Journalists said.
An Iraqi lights a cigarette with a lighter in the shape of a statue of Saddam Hussein holding a gun (Sarah Arar/AFP/Getty Images)
Do I smell a reality show?
Iraqi Idol?
Who wants to kill Saddam?
The Hangman?
"He dies immediately, so he does not suffer..."
he doesn't deserve a clean hanging
It would have been better if he is executed by a firing squad of two dozen Iraqis.
Um, I don't mean to whizz on the parade, but it ain't difficult to find hundreds of Iraqis offering to do anything that has a check waiting at the end.
Are you sure this job is being paid? I'd guessed it's rather honorary service...
They could probably sell the rope on eBay and make a fortune...
It isn't about what he deserves. It's about what the country and the region and the world need. I don't pull the legs off of cockroaches or the wings off of flies -- I just squash them, so they're gone and forgotten. I wipe my shoe on the doormat and go on my merry way.
Saddam has been a malignancy on Iraq for three decades. You don't tease a tumor. You don't taunt it or torture it or call it nasty names. You just cut it out, examine it, and then throw it into an incinerator.
“He dies immediately, so he does not suffer. A doctor comes and checks the heartbeat to make sure he is dead."
Correction: "He usually dies immedialtely."
..to be aced by a firing party indicates some honor...
Where can I get an application?
lol, Thats what I was thinking.
Will it be televised is my next question.
Just out of curiosity, what does this line have to do with the rest of the story?
I think it ought to be a person who's family was murdered by Saddam that gets the job....
Isn't the drop distance supposed to be according to the person's weight?
The impending execution of Saddam will bring short term retribution from his most loyal supporters. This is to be expected but it is not a reason not to move ahead with a just sentence after a reasonable trial.
The benefits of this action far outweigh the cost of this short term reaction. After 1991 many thought Saddam would fall but he didn't. This fact has lead many, inside Iraq and outside Iraq, to believe that he will once again return to power somehow.
I offer that this stream of thought has many Iraqi's 'on the fence' so to speak. They fear too much cooperation with us and our allies because, in their minds, the threat of Saddam returning and us bailing out on them is real. After all, that is exactly what happened a bit over a decade ago.
Today, Iraqi's see Democrats taking power in ways that remind them of that time. They have cause to be fearful of a repeat.
The death of Saddam, in a public display, would go a long way to getting most of these people off of the fence. This execution will be the period at the end of a horrible sentence. Hopefully, an end to a very long story. Maybe the last page can be turned and that book closed.
It was proper to remove Saddam, as he was the frontman for the underlying reasons fueling Osama Bin Laden's war upon us. I find it sad that most Americans do not even know why 9-11 happened, much less why so many other attacks happened in the decade before 9-11.
Saddam is done and the Iraqi's have us to thank for it. Indeed, they have the leadership of a great man and our soldiers under his command to thank for it. Many more will be willing to show that thanks once he is actually gone from this world forever.
When they see Saddam swing, when they see the Democrats refusing to revoke funding, when they see us stay the course ( context being seeing it thru), when they see the world media has lost, they will come around and start writing the new chapters of Iraqi history. It's about time.
What happens if he is not dead? Does he get turned loose then because Allah has deemed that he should live?
Your post was brilliant. However, regarding the above point, I expect the worst from the Democrats now in power in Congress. If they do refuse to revoke funding, that will be a big surprise to me. Perhaps a minority of them will vote with Republicans against any bill to revoke funding, but the majority of Democrats will try to pull the rug out from under our war effort.
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