We interrupt your regular scheduled programming to bring you gratuitous and sensationalized footage of Saddam Hussein’s execution.
As it’s now well known, Saddam was executed by hanging on Dec. 30 after being convicted of crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shiites. Although few would dispute Saddam’s guilt, the trial itself was hardly a beacon of justice. Among the trial’s travesties were the open verbal sparring between the judge and Saddam and the assassinations and attempted assassinations of both the prosecuting and defending lawyers. Midway through the trial, the chief judge was replaced.
Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence against him, Saddam should still have been entitled to a fair and legitimate trial with an impartial judge. There’s value in having the Iraqi people themselves put their former dictator on trial, but Saddam should have been tried in an international court, as Slobodan Milosevic was, to ensure the complete and satisfactory application of justice.
It was disappointing that the decision to go through with Saddam’s execution happened so quickly, before he was able to stand trial for all of the crimes he had been accused of. This denied victims and their families a means of restitution. Even if the death penalty was warranted early on in the trial, it should have been stayed until the trial was completed fully.
If the reason for rushing Saddam’s trial and execution was to encourage greater stability and progress in Iraq, the attempt backfired as Saddam’s execution has caused only greater unrest. His hanging was turned into a circus and used as a tool for the U.S. government to try to show that Iraq is making progress, rather than a matter of international justice.
Even for a mass murderer, the choice to execute Saddam only hours before the recognized Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha shows a complete disregard for human dignity.
The media didn’t help matters. CNN and other news stations sensationalized the event, airing—and continuously re-airing— the tape of Saddam seconds before he was killed. When something this sensitive is broadcast so liberally, it’s a sad testament to American media.
But the way the trial was treated is more problematic than the videos that have proliferated after his execution. Whether he was a brutal murderer or not, the way his trial and execution were handled
only reflects poorly on the Iraqi and American authorities.
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