By all accounts, U.S. officials hoped the execution of Saddam Hussein would be a moment of solemn justice and not a spasm of sectarian revenge. We wish this had been the case.
The hanging of the former Iraqi dictator complied with Iraqi law, to be sure, but it was carried out in unseemly fashion. The goal was to carry out his punishment on behalf of hundreds of thousands of people killed under his brutal regime – not just the Shiite majority now in power. Instead, the dictator’s march to the gallows became a tawdry affair complete with taunting from Shiite onlookers and captured on video by a security guard using a cellphone.
Iraqi officials must take responsibility for the episode that took place in a dark, dank facility under U.S. control.
After a lengthy trial that ended in a sentence of death, and then a snap appeal, it was critical that Hussein’s punishment be carried out with sensitivity to minimize any spurt of violent reaction. Instead, the video captured Hussein’s deer-in-the-headlights countenance from having been hastily turned over by the American military to his Iraqi executioners in Saturday’s predawn hours.
The video depicted the mocking and jeering by the Shiite audience that cheapened the intent of his punishment. To no one’s surprise, the video sparked anger among Hussein’s Sunni supporters and condemnation across much of the world.
U.S. officials have privately expressed concern at the hastiness of the execution, which came four days after an appeals court upheld Hussein’s death sentence. Hussein had been in U.S. custody since he was captured in 2003, held for much of that time at the high-security Camp Cropper at Baghdad’s international airport. Surely they could have better orchestrated his release. The official word is that U.S. officials felt compelled to turn him over once Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki rushed through documents approving the execution. Hussein was turned over about four hours before he was hanged.
A lawyer for Hussein has been quoted as saying that U.S. authorities tried to maintain custody of Hussein as long as possible to prevent him from being humiliated before his execution. Likewise, the U.S. military quickly returned his body to his hometown to prevent any mistreatment of his corpse.
The guard who filmed the execution is reportedly being detained. An Iraqi official said cellphones were banned at the hanging and that everyone was searched. The government says it will not make the same mistake in the future. Sadly, the damage is done.
