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: http://www.telegraph.co.uk
ARTICLE TITLE: This is the week I changed my mind about hanging
DATE: Sunday 21 December
2003
AUTHOR: Stephen Pollard
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Stephen Pollard (born c. 1965) is a British author and journalist
who is currently editor of The Jewish Chronicle. He is a former Chairman
of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and a
former president of the Centre for the New Europe, a free-market think tank
based in Brussels. He has written columns for several publications, including The
Times and the Daily Mail, and also has also maintained a blog. Pollard
is an alumnus of John Lyon School and Mansfield College, Oxford.
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3600549/This-is-the-week-I-changed-my-mind-about-hanging.html
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Stephen Pollard
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I
have a question for Tony Blair, for Jack Straw, and for anyone else who says
that they oppose the death penalty for murderers such as Ian Huntley but are,
none the less, prepared to see Saddam hang. It is a very simple question, made
up of just three letters. Why?
All
my adult life I have opposed the death penalty. My reasons are standard,
shared, I am sure, by the vast majority of those who oppose capital punishment.
Of all of them, one stands out: better that 99 guilty men should go free than
that one innocent man should be killed. That is, of course, a practical rather
than a moral objection, but I have also had a principled objection to the idea
of the state taking a life when it sees fit. War, certainly, presents a
different circumstance, when there is simply no choice but for the state to
kill in order to survive. But it is impossible to imagine how, in response to
criminal behaviour, life imprisonment rather than execution would put at risk a
country's very existence.
So
if last week had been a normal week, my reaction to the conviction of Ian
Huntley would have been that he should be locked up for ever - that, as David
Blunkett is now attempting to ensure, "life means life". And I would
have had very little concern for the conditions in which he was kept - other,
that is, than that they should not be comfortable.
But
it was not a normal week. By the end of it, I had come to realise that I can
see no reason, either moral or practical, why Ian Huntley should not be
executed - or why other murderers, too, should not be killed.
Saddam
Hussein's capture leads to no other conclusion. It is one thing to argue that
taking life is always immoral. Such an absolutist view may be wrong-headed -
self defence, by both states and individuals, is the most obvious refutation -
but those who argue that Saddam should be punished not through execution but by
life imprisonment have at least the virtue of intellectual consistency.
Those,
however, such as the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, who say that
they oppose the death penalty (indeed, as Mr Straw put it on Monday, they
continue to "campaign hard to try to extend the abolition of the death
penalty") but that in this instance they are prepared to acquiesce in what
they must consider to be state-sponsored, judicial murder have no such virtue.
Their position is incoherent, unprincipled, and plain wrong. If they believe
that it is wrong for the state to punish murderers by execution - a perfectly
valid position - then it is, well, wrong. It is not wrong in Britain but right
in Iraq or wrong in California but right in Texas.
They
explain their position - that it is all right to hang Saddam, but not to hang
Huntley - with a decidedly specious argument. According to Mr Blair, "it
is for them [the Iraqis] to determine what penalties there may be". Aha!
Now we are getting to the nub of the issue: Iraqis are barbarians of whom we
can expect no better - a view which has been implicit in the comments of those
who say that Saddam must be tried by an international, rather than Iraqi,
court. Such a stance, which seems at first instance to be respectful of Iraqi
feelings, turns out on further examination to be deeply patronising.
Either
capital punishment is immoral or it isn't. By refusing to condemn any potential
execution of Saddam, Messrs Blair and Straw and the others who have fallen into
line behind them are, from their perspective on capital punishment, supporting
a grotesquely immoral act. They are also exposing the deep flaws in their
opposition to the death penalty at home. If it is wrong to execute Ian Huntley,
it is wrong to execute Saddam. But that works in reverse, too. If, as the Prime
Minister and Foreign Secretary appear to believe, it is morally acceptable to
kill Saddam, how can it be any less so to kill Ian Huntley? It is a perverted
moral calculus which holds that murdering two children is somehow more
acceptable than murdering 300,000.
I
have never been an absolutist in my opposition to ending human life. Since I
accept that there are times when it is right to kill, in the last week I have
had to ask myself an unsettling question: when could there be a clearer-cut
example of living, breathing evil, and when could the extermination of that
evil be more justified? As I watched the wonderful pictures of Saddam's
humiliation, I could not - nor can I still - think of a single reason why he
should not be executed. I am left with only one response, which is that Saddam
should indeed be put to death - after due process.
Much
as I have tried to escape this conclusion, I cannot: there are no sensible
grounds on which one can argue that it is morally right to execute Saddam but
not Ian Huntley. Anyone who accepts that Saddam should be killed must also
accept the case for capital punishment more generally. We can argue about
details - to which forms of murder it should apply, and in what circumstances -
but the principle is clear. Accept the moral validity of executing Saddam and
you must accept it for executing Huntley - and, indeed, anyone convicted of
cold-blooded and deliberate murder.
The
imprisonment of Saddam has made me realise that, far from opposing the death
penalty, I can see no moral alternative to it. As for the idea that it is
better that 99 guilty men go free than one innocent man is hanged, the response
of one visiting member of the Chinese judiciary to that statement is perhaps
the most pertinent observation: "Better for whom?"
• Stephen Pollard is a senior fellow at the Centre
for the New Europe in Brussels. Jenny McCartney returns next week.
COMMENTS:
I
chose this article for the death penalty article of the week as Saddam Hussein
was executed by hanging six years ago on this day (30 December 2006). I will
post from Wikipedia on how Saddam Hussein was put to death:
Prior
to execution
Two
days prior to the execution, a letter written by Saddam appeared on the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party web site. In the
letter, he urged the Iraqi people to unite, and not to hate the people of
countries that invaded Iraq, like the United States, but instead the
decision-makers. He said he was ready to die a martyr
and he said that this is his death sentence. In the hours before the execution,
Saddam ate his last meal of chicken
and rice, with a cup of hot water and honey. He then said prayers and read
verses from the Qur'an.
Execution
Time
and place
Saddam
was executed by hanging at approximately 06:00 local time (03:00 GMT) on
December 30, 2006, the day Sunni Iraqis begin celebrating Eid al-Adha. Reports
conflict as to the exact time of the execution, with some sources reporting the
time as 06:00, 06:05, or some, as late as 06:10. The execution took place at
the joint Iraqi-American military base Camp Justice, located in Kazimain, a
north-eastern suburb of Baghdad. Camp Justice was previously used by Saddam as
his military intelligence headquarters, then known as Camp Banzai, where Iraqi
civilians were taken to be tortured and executed on the same gallows. Contrary
to initial reports, Saddam was executed alone, not at the same time as his
co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, who were
executed on January 15, 2007.
Proceedings
A
senior of Iraqi official who was involved in the events leading to Saddam's
death was quoted as saying, "The Americans wanted to delay the execution
by 15 days because they weren't keen on having him executed right away. But
during the day [before the execution] the prime minister's office provided all
the documents they asked for and the Americans changed their minds when they
saw the prime minister was very insistent. Then it was just a case of
finalizing the details." U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William
Caldwell told journalists in Baghdad that after "physical control" of
Saddam was given to the Iraqi government, "the multinational force had
absolutely no direct involvement with [the execution] whatsoever." There
were no U.S. representatives present in the execution room.
Reports
circulated that Saddam's behavior was "submissive" and that he was
carrying the Qur'an he had been keeping with him throughout his trial before
his execution. Al-Rubiae, who was a witness to Saddam's execution, described
Saddam as repeatedly shouting "down with the invaders." Al-Rubaie
reportedly asked Saddam if he had any remorse or fear, to which Saddam replied:
"No,
I am a militant and I have no fear for myself. I have spent my life in jihad
and fighting aggression. Anyone who takes this route should not be afraid."
Sami
al-Askari, a witness to the execution, said, "Before the rope was put
around his neck, Saddam shouted, 'Allahu Akbar. The Muslim Ummah will be
victorious and Palestine is Arab!'" Saddam also stressed that the Iraqis
should fight the American invaders. After the rope was secured, guards shouted
various rebukes including "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" in reference
to Muqtada al-Sadr; Saddam repeated the name mockingly and rebuked the shouts
stating, "Do you consider this bravery?" A Shi'a version of an
Islamic prayer was also recited by some of those present in the room, an
apparent sectarian insult against the Sunni Saddam. One observer told Saddam:
"Go to hell!"
Saddam
replied,
"The hell that is Iraq?"
Another
man asked for quiet, saying,
"Please, stop. The man is facing an
execution."
Saddam
began to recite the Shahada again. As he neared the end of his second
recitation, the platform dropped. According to The New York Times, the
executioners "cheer their Shi'ite heroes so persistently that one observer
[in the execution chambers] makes a remark about how the effort to rein in
militias does not seem to be going well." During the drop there was an
audible crack indicating that his neck was broken. After Saddam was suspended
for a few minutes, the doctor present listened with a stethoscope for a
heartbeat. After he detected none, the rope was cut, and the body was placed in
a coffin.
Alleged postmortem stabbings
According
to Talal Misrab, the head guard at Saddam's tomb and who also helped in the
burial, Saddam was stabbed six times after he was executed. The head of
Saddam's tribe, Sheikh Hasan al-Neda, denies this claim. Mowaffak al-Rubaie,
Iraq's security advisor, stated, "I oversaw the whole process from A-Z and
Saddam Hussein's body was not, not stabbed or mutilated, and he was not
humiliated before execution."
Burial
Saddam's
body was buried in his birthplace of Al-Awja in Tikrit, Iraq, near family
members, including his two sons Uday and Qusay Hussein, on December 31, 2006 at
04:00 local time (01:00 GMT). His body was transported to Tikrit by a U.S.
military helicopter. Saddam was handed over from Iraqi Government possession to
Sheikh Ali al-Nida, the late head of the Albu Nasir tribe and governor of Salaheddin,
to be buried. He was buried about three kilometers (2 mi) from his two
sons in the same cemetery. Saddam's eldest daughter Raghad Hussein, under
asylum in Jordan, had asked that "his body be buried in Yemen temporarily
until Iraq is liberated and it can be reburied in Iraq", a family
spokesperson said by telephone. The family also said his body might be buried
in Ramadi, citing safety concerns, though there are no plans to do this.
Three
years after writing this article, Stephen Pollard was right; Saddam Hussein was
hung for war crimes. Ian Huntley is still alive, while the Soham girls are dead
and gone. I was like Stephen Pollard, a strong opponent of the death penalty
but became a supporter because of the murder of Sally Anne Bowman and Amrozi’s execution (together with several other
reasons).
“Better
for whom?”
Like
Pollard, one of the reasons why I used to oppose capital punishment is that I
was afraid of an innocent person being executed. Timothy Evans was the first
case of a wrongful execution, which I read about. However, after reading the
case carefully, I have doubts if he truly was innocent of his crimes. Other
than being better for the wrongful condemned man’s family, I do not think it is
better for society to let the truly guilty killers live. Think of the victims’
families and violent criminals.
If you want to reintroduce capital punishment
to the United Kingdom, please leave the European Union.John O’Sullivan will
explain more.
See the videos on Saddam Hussein’s trial and
execution: