Shunpiking Online Vo.4 No.1 Death Verdict for Saddam Hussein and the Imperial Politics of Assassination

TML denounces the ruling of the so-called Iraqi High Tribunal Appeals Court to uphold the November 5 death sentence by hanging for former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and various co-defendants. The entire trial of Saddam Hussein by a kangaroo court under U.S. occupation is a new exercise in the politics of assassination perfected by the United States since the Second World War as an instrument of criminalizing politics. Besides the CIA instigated coups d'etat in Iran, Greece and Guatemala in 1953-54, U.S. imperialism was also the driving force behind the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, the financing of the Contras in Nicaragua, the invasion of Grenada and Panama, the financing of cut-throats in El Salvador and more than 600 assassination attempts against President Fidel Castro. All these criminal activities were means perfected by the United States to make sure the peoples of the world and their governments could not solve a single problem in a peaceful manner on the basis of rule of law.

During the 1980's and 90's, the politics of assassination engineered by the secret agencies of the reactionary Indian state became their preferred instrument to destabilize the people's political movement in Punjab and other parts of India. Since then, the use of assassination to instigate civil wars and wreck any political movements of the peoples has become the norm of the Israeli Zionists in the Palestinian territories and it has been introduced in Lebanon and on a widescale in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. Bush's so-called war on terror is state terrorism with a licence to kill. The staged trial of Saddam Hussein and death sentences can only be considered in this light. There is no clearer indictment of the U.S. imperialist economic and political system in deep crisis which, to save itself, turns against the peaceful solution of problems.

No amount of justification about fighting terrorism can justify state terrorism, aggression and occupations. Besides anything else, the trial and sentence against Saddam Hussein points to the desperation of the U.S., British and other supporters of the occupation of Iraq to find an exit strategy to the quagmire they have created for themselves. Far from sorting anything out and achieving the so-called reconciliation they talk about, the imposition of a kangaroo court and assassinations after a deeply flawed trial and bogus legal process will never cover up the death and destruction they themselves have rained on Iraq and their own crimes against humanity.

TML calls on all democratic and justice-loving forces to condemn the fraudulent rule of law imposed in Iraq and continue to dissociate themselves from state terrorism, all individual acts of terrorism and violence and the criminalization of politics using assassination as a preferred weapon. All those responsible for these criminal acts must be held to account.

For Your Information

Saddam Hussein was sentenced on November 5 to death by hanging after being found guilty of crimes against humanity in the Dujail case. In this case Saddam Hussein and his seven co-accused were charged for the killing of 148 Shiite villagers after a failed assassination attempt against the President in the town of Dujail in July, 1982.

The Dujail trial commenced before the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (also known as the Iraqi Special Tribunal) in Baghdad on October 19, 2005, and ended on July 27, 2006, with a verdict announced on November 5, 2006. Besides delivering a death sentence for Saddam Hussein, also sentenced to death were Barzan Hassan, Saddam Hussein's half-brother and former head of the Iraqi intelligence agency, and Awad Bandar, the former chief judge of the Revolutionary Court. Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former vice-president of Iraq, was sentenced to life in prison. Three other defendants each received sentences from three to 15 years in jail, and one was acquitted.

Following the verdict, Mr. Hussein had one month to appeal the verdict. Now that the Iraqi High Tribunal Appeals Court has rejected the appeal, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is called upon to sign the official sentencing document. It is expected that the sentence will be carried out forthwith.

The nine-judge appellate court also upheld the death sentences against Barzan Hassan and Awad al-Bander and recommended the execution of former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan, originally sentenced to life in prison.

Mr. Hussein's defence lawyers issued a statement from Amman, Jordan, calling on Arab governments and the United Nations to intervene to stop the execution. "Otherwise, all may be participating in what is going on, either actually or due to their silence in face of these crimes, which are being committed in Iraq in the name of democracy," the lawyers said in an e-mail statement to the Associated Press. The statement, signed by the Defence Committee for President Saddam Hussein, said the court's rejection of Mr. Hussein's appeal was part of the "continued shedding of pure Iraqi blood by the current regime in Iraq, which (is) directly connected with the American occupation."

Amnesty International repeated its opposition to the death penalty as a matter of principle "but particularly in this case because it comes after a flawed trial."

Source: http://www.cpcml.ca/Tmld2006/D36204.htm#1