NOTICE: The following
article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to
violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.
PAGE TITLE: Asharq Al-Awsat
ARTICLE TITLE: Living on Death Row
AUTHOR: Muhammad
Sadiq Diab
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Muhammad Sadiq Diab (1942 to 8 April 2011)
is a well-known Saudi writer and
journalist. He was
born in Jeddah and was editor in chief of a number of Saudi magazines,
including Iqra, Al-Jadeedah (a publication of the Saudi Research and Publishing
Company that also publishes Arab News) and the Haj and Umrah magazine of which
he was chief editor until his death. He had a daily column in the London-based
Asharq Al-Awsat Arabic newspaper, which is a sister publication of Arab News.
Diab wrote a number of books and short stories, including “A Woman and a Cup of
Coffee,” “History and Social Life,” "The Wall Clock Ticks Twice,” “16
Stories from the Hara” and “Common Proverbs.” He also wrote a book on the
dialect of Jeddawis. He died in
a London hospital on Friday 8 April 2011 after a long battle with cancer. He
was 69.
URL: http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=2&id=22557
& http://www.alarabiya.net/save_pdf.php?cont_id=121245
DATE: Monday 4 October
2010
 |
Muhammad Sadiq Diab
|
Living on
Death Row
By Muhammad Diyab
By Muhammad Diyab
It is certain that Hisham Talaat Moustafa, and
Mohsen al-Sukkari, will have slept long and well – for the first time in a
while – after a court verdict released the noose from around their necks. Being
sentenced to years of imprisonment, with all its deprivation, pain, and dark
nights, is still a much more merciful outcome for an inmate than to remain on
death row, with the possibility that a warden will knock on his cell door one morning
to take him to his execution. One is unable to imagine the magnitude of anxiety
that is faced by someone waiting to be executed. One inmate, sentenced to
death, wrote in their diary prior to their execution, giving a candid and rare
account of the agony of waiting, the fear of dying, and the cruel sense the
imminent end.
An Arabic prison officer also told me of his
difficult task, being entrusted with bringing death row inmates from their
cells to the execution room, and how many of them lose their ability to move or
even express themselves. They pray on their way to the execution room, looking
almost dead, in a state of mental breakdown. There are rare exceptions of
course, such as the case of Saddam Hussein. When the American troops described
Saddam Hussein’s final moments, in a letter to his wife, which has recently
been published, they said that he was able to smile in front of the gallows, as
if he was observing something pleasant. When he was told that he would be
executed within hours, he was not distressed, but rather he requested a meal of
rice with boiled chicken meat, and drank several glasses of hot water with
honey, a drink he had enjoyed since his childhood.
In my opinion, those such as Saddam Hussein are
aware of the likely prospects of their fate. He was engulfed, for a long time,
within the psychological ‘game’ of the killer and the victim. A former official
from an authoritarian regime has analyzed this ‘game’, by saying that “you are
[mentally] distressed only by your first victim. After that, you need to decide
whether to get out of the game or continue. To continue means the risk, and
ultimately the reality, that you are also a dead body”.
Those who demand the abolition of the death penalty
for murderers and criminals, in both the East and the West, forget the feelings
of the victim’s family, and the magnitude of their loss. The role of the death
penalty is to offer a form of just retribution, whilst it also serves as a
deterrent, and supports the security of societies. Even states that adopt the
principle of ‘blood money’ should not allow profiteering from the millions paid
by good-hearted humanitarians, since this might lead to a dangerous increase of
the rate of murders or a desensitisation towards the act of killing. Yet, it is
necessary for the concerned authorities to distinguish between a killer and
another in terms of the nature of the crime, its motives and its surrounding
conditions.
Muhammad Diyab is a well-known Saudi writer and journalist.
Comment:
I
love the last paragraph of this article. It shows that Diyab acknowledged that the
government must have the moral duty of providing justice to the victims’
families and also protecting society. I agree that some crimes cannot be
compensated by paying a huge sum of money, they can only be compensated by
paying with their lives.
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