How to hang a man: Nuremberg and Baghdad

Darn! I hate it when I need to lay my hands on a particular book but can’t find it… Today, it was the account Rebecca West gave in A Train of Powder of the hanging of the ten men sentenced to death at Nuremberg.
Goering, who also received a death sentence, “cheated” the hangman by swallowing a cyanide pill the night before.
West’s book has a detailed description of the process of the ten hangings that did happen. She prefaces that with an account of how, over earlier decades, the British had “perfected” the technique. The drop through the trapdoor should be long enough for the neck to snap once the end of the rope is reached. Also, the rope shouldn’t be too elastic/springy, or the jolt on the neck might not be sharp enough to break it. (Sorry for these grisly details. Read no further if you find this hard to take.)
However, at Nuremberg, the American GI’s who constructed the gallows did not have enough of the relevant expertise– being more used to electric chairs and the like, where they came from… So as West reported it, the hanged men at Nuremberg took some 20 minutes to die, dangling at the end of their ropes and suffering a slow and presumably painful asphyxiation.
She left unresolved, as I recall it, the question of whether the people who designed that faulty process had done so intentionally, or not.
I wanted to put some excerpts from her account into this post, just to show (through the contrast) that, by all accounts, the hangmen in Baghdad at least did a more “professional”– and therefore, if one can say this, “humane”– job than those in Nuremberg.
I did look at most of the YouTube posting of a video of Saddam’s hanging that was apparently shot by one of the observers there, through a cellphone or some other similarly small device. As video, it was highly imperfect as people kept getting in the way, the camera was swinging around, etc. But the audio on it was remarkably sharp.
I think Marc Santora’s account of the hanging in today’s NYT is largely based on having his Iraqi colleagues– two are named at the bottom– give him a translation of the voices that can be heard on the video. On the video you certainly can hear one or more men shouting “Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada!”
Saddam’s comportment as he reached his last minutes seemed considerably more dignified than that of some of the invited observers.
Santora wrote:

    He said a last prayer. Then, with his eyes wide open, no stutter or choke in his throat, he said his final words cursing the Americans and the Persians.
    At 6:10 a.m., the trapdoor swung open. He seemed to fall a good distance, but he died swiftly. After just a minute, his body was still. His eyes still were open but he was dead. Despite the scarf, the rope cut a gash into his neck.
    His body stayed hanging for another nine minutes as those in attendance broke out in prayer, praising the Prophet, at the death of a dictator.

On the YouTube video, you can briefly see the hanged body before they cut it down.
After it was taken down it was wrapped in a shroud and driven to his birth-town, Ouja (Auja), where it was buried around 24 hours later. AP’s Steven Hurst wrote today,

    Hundreds of Iraqis flocked to the village where Saddam Hussein was born on Sunday to see the deposed leader buried in a religious compound 24 hours after his execution…
    At Saddam’s funeral, dozens of relatives and others, some of them crying and moaning, attended the interment shortly before dawn in Ouja. A few knelt before his flag-draped grave. A large framed photograph of Saddam was propped up on a chair nearby.
    “I condemn the way he was executed and I consider it a crime,” said 45-year-old Salam Hassan al-Nasseri, one of Saddam’s clansmen who attended the interment in the village just outside Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. Some 2,000 Iraqis traveled to the village as well.
    Mohammed Natiq, a 24-year-old college student, said “the path of Arab nationalism must inevitably be paved with blood.”
    “God has decided that Saddam Hussein should have such an end, but his march and the course which he followed will not end,” Natiq said…
    The head of Saddam’s Albu-Nassir’s clan said the body showed no signs of mistreatment.
    “We received the body of Saddam Hussein without any complications. There was cooperation by the prime minister and his office’s director,” the clan chief, Sheik al-Nidaa, told state-run Al-Iraqiya television. “We opened the coffin of Saddam. He was cleaned and wrapped according to Islamic teachings. We didn’t see any unnatural signs on his body.”

Hurst also wrote,

    In Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City on Saturday, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country.

The NYT this morning had a huge, front-page picture of “an Iraqi family in Basra” watching a video feed of Saddam being led to the gallows on their large television. Front and center is a very cute-looking girl-child of three or four years old who is smiling and laughing as she appears to point to the picture.
This “eye for an eye” business will surely go on for generations to come unless some Iraqis, somewhere, intervene in a very serious way to stop it.
Looking at that picture made me remember my visit to Rwanda in 2002. There, too, a large proportion of the population was still nursing extremely bitter memories of many decades of strife, victimization, and counter-victimization… But the most notable thing I saw when I was there was the work of several religious communities– primarily Protestant Evangelicals of various denominations (including, yes, evangelical Quakers), but also Muslims– that were intentionally and with great success building up large congregations of people who were survivors of the 1994 genocide who were worshiping and working alongside people whose family members were accused of participation in the genocide… Hutus and Tutsis worshiping and working together there, and thereby starting to find a way out of the cycles of violence that had plagued the country since the 1950s.
Can Iraqis find some analogous way to transcend and escape from the cycles of violence into which the past quarter century of developments– including but not limited to my own government’s brutal; and divisive interventions– have plunged their country? I hope and pray so.
Maybe the fact that Saddam Hussein is now, definitively, “yesterday’s news” can help that to happen?
… Meanwhile, I see from Hurst’s AP story that the US death toll in Iraq is just about to top 3,000.

28 thoughts on “How to hang a man: Nuremberg and Baghdad”

  1. Helena
    The dead are dead. You shouldn’t dwell on the details.
    Very few of us didn’t watch the videos. As Malcolm Rifkind the former Foreign Secretary said “He Died well” which he didn’t expect.
    Our duty is to the living. BBC news just reported the 3000th American KIA.

  3. Despot dead, but Iraq still haunts Bush
    Paul McGeough, January 1, 2007

    Saddam’s death might have been a moment of redemption for the US and its chief partners in this botched Middle Eastern adventure – Britain and Australia. But it is unlikely to resonate with ordinary Iraqis as they go about their daily struggle. As a former US State Department Middle East specialist, Henri Barkey, told reporters at the weekend: “If everything had followed the coalition plan, if everything were calm now, this could have been the biggest event of the year – maybe the biggest event in the post-invasion. But everyday existence is so grave and grim, it’s not what it might have been.”

    It doesn’t resonate with Americans either. In the latest Gallup Poll, 64 per cent of respondents said that the blood-and-treasure cost of the war in Iraq outweighed the benefits.

    And there is increasing pessimism in the traditionally loyal ranks of the US military – a poll for Military Times found that for the first time, more US troops disapprove of Mr Bush’s handling of the war than approve of it – 42 per cent against, just 35 per cent for.

    Saddam ruled Iraq on fear alone. Mr Bush and his allies broke Saddam, but they have left Iraqis to thrash around in a dangerous and empty void – a pity for the Iraqis and a disaster for Mr Bush.

  4. The Nuremberg trials may have been “victor’s justice”, but there was certainly much more justice involved in them than there was in the “trial” of Saddam in Baghdad, which was no trial, but a lynching party. So was the execution; a televised lynching, watched by the whole world, applauded enthusiastically by the same leaders, who are responsible for creating a situation in Iraq which is so horrible, that some Iraqi’s would even prefer Saddam to the present situation.

  5. In Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City on Saturday, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets
    Helena, do you really knows what Sader City is?
    Althawarah “Sader City” it’s a city of poverty and most dangerous crimes and criminals, also gangs.
    I tell this Helena, Iraqi governments from 1973 and on spent billions of dollars on what called at a time the Explosion Plane to develop Iraq from North to South, Iraq was a big workshop, high ways roads specially North in Kurdish Area with vary hard to work mountain land, the educations, schools, hospitals medical centres, drinking water networks and sewage networks reach each single streets and roads in all around Iraq, those who living in “Thowra” they went to the university, they hired in Iraqi army as Captains Commanders
    In Saddam time they did some troubles, he did responded heavy handed as he done every time with others, arrested and killed some of them.
    Those early pictures you saw when the American entered Baghdad, those looting Iraqi asset, most those people from a Sader City those the people the Iraqi government spent millions to get them from the dark and negligent for years, they done the damage far for Iraq and its citizens,
    This is eye whiteness told me in a Sader City first year of occupation some stand in a place called “Marady Market” had sings hanged on their cheeses “US$100.0 To Kill” so you pay $100 if you like to kill any one you don’t like or revenge and others……. this is the sort of people there “I don’t say all of them but every one in Iraq specially in Baghdad will tell if you ask him.
    I don’t know well NY City but looks like Down Town of NY where the gang settle there.

  6. “Very few of us didn’t watch the videos.”
    I didn’t watch the video, not because I find the execution morally reprehensible (which I do) but because I’m just not interested in watching other people suffer.

  7. Ditto for me, Mike. There is something disgustingly voyeuristic about watching something like that. It is the main reason I will never watch that video – the same reason I do not watch the beheading videos, and why I do not slow down to stare at road accidents. I particularly do not care to watch people suffering from the deliberate acts of other people.

  8. After a trial so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch—the largest single unit of the US Human Rights industry— had to condemn it as a total travesty. Washington’s orders; defence lawyers were killed and the whole procedure resembled a well-orchestrated lynch mob. Where Nurnberg was a more dignified application of victor’s justice,
    Saddam’s lynching might send a shiver through the collective, if artificial, spine of the Arab ruling elites. If Saddam can be hanged, so can Mubarik, the Hashemite joker in Amman and the Saudi royals, as long as those who topple them are happy to play ball with Washington.
    http://www.zaman.com/?bl=commentary&alt=&trh=20061231&hn=39621

  9. Salah,
    Al Thowra (aka Medinat Saddam, aka Madinat Al Sadr) was the one area of Baghdad where we did not feel safe. We never entered it, not by public transportation, not by car, and certainly not on foot, not even to make a shortcut to some other place. Every time we passed by that area, and when we went out alone to a destination in the same direction, someone in our families felt compelled to remind is to stay out of Al Thowra.

  12. The Iraqi government and US made a huge mistake by executed Saddam.
    Whatever Saddam did with his brutality, his wars and crimes to all Iraqis, he convicted with what the court and judges see, we accepting US interference in all the scenario of the procedure of conducting his case.
    It’s misfortune and regrettably a huge loose for Iraqi government and US this opportunity it can repair the image for the Iraqi Puppets and US in the eyes and hearts of all Iraqi .This was easy be done without big thinking and a huge effort, either Maliki as PM or he cane make a scenario , Hakim and Sader and Asistani issue a letter of amnesty reducing Saddam’s death penalty to life sentence, its was all the requirement of this scenario from the timing as its Muharam Islamic calendar “ Muslims not allowed to fights and kill during this Month, unless some one fight them” also its Hajj, and Eid, so it was a good case for them to use it and win and be respected in the eyes and hearts of all Iraqis, as for US it was also a case changing the planeand start new year with all things may settel down for more thinking.
    In regards of US if they concerned about his secrets it was easy to make hidden deal with him by saving his life.
    For the Iraqi government can be looked and win the support and respect of most of the international community who concerning of the miss justices in Iraq and human rights concerns and with other Arab state will engorge them to come and help them and recognise them.
    Unfortunately they did the stupidest things which the revenge from their enemy who was in their hands and they can do whatever the like.
    But their senses dead and they lost the view for their future in Iraq and out side Iraq and they dig their graves from now and on.

  13. Riverbend is unimpressed with the lynching.
    http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
    See, this is another low the Maliki government sunk to- they had some hecklers conveniently standing by during the execution. Maliki claimed they were “some witnesses from the trial”, but they were, very obviously, hecklers. The moment the noose was around Saddam’s neck, they began chanting, in unison, “God’s prayers be on Mohamed and on Mohamed’s family…” Something else I didn’t quite catch (but it was very coordinated), and then “Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada!” One of them called out to Saddam, “Go to hell…” (in Arabic). Saddam looked down disdainfully and answered “Heya hay il marjala…?” which is basically saying, “Is this your manhood…?”.
    Someone half-heartedly called out to the hecklers, “I beg you, I beg you- the man is being executed!” They were slightly quieter and then Saddam stood and said, “Ashadu an la ilaha ila Allah, wa ashhadu ana Mohammedun rasool Allah…” Which means, “I witness there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is His messenger.” These are the words a Muslim (Sunnis and Shia alike) should say on their deathbed. He repeated this one more time, very clearly, but before he could finish it, he was lynched.
    So, no, CNN, his last words were not “Muqtada Al Sadr” in a mocking tone- just thought someone should clear that up. (Really people, six of you contributed to that article!)
    Hearts and Minds is definitely off.

  14. “The Americans said that we have no issue in handing him over, but we need everything to be in accordance with the law,” the Iraqi official said. “We do not want to break the law.”

    He said he attended a late-night dinner at the prime minister’s office at which American officers and Maliki’s officials debated the issue.

    One of the officials who attended described the meeting this way: “The Iraqis seemed quite frustrated, saying, ‘Who is going to execute him, anyway, you or us?’ The Americans replied by saying that obviously, it was the Iraqis who would carry out the hanging. So the Iraqis said, ‘This is our problem and we will handle the consequences. If there is any damage done, it is we who will be damaged, not you.'”

  17. Dick & W are doing everything in their power to increase tensions in Iraq. The timing and manner of Hussein’s execution were deliberately provocative. Beginning this week, we will start hearing the new Powerpoint slogans blaming Iran and Syria for preventing Iraqi reconciliation. In the words of the great Merle Haggard, we are “rolling downhill like a snowball headed for Hell.”

  19. Former Saddam judge says execution violates Iraqi law

    Rizkar Mohammed Amin, who later resigned as the trial’s chief judge, said Iraqi law banned executions during the Eid al-Adha festival period that marks the end of the annual Hajj pilgrimage.


    The four-day Feast of the Sacrifice began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday — the day Saddam was hanged in Baghdad — and on Sunday for Shiites.


    Amin also claimed that Iraqi law stipulates an execution must be carried out 30 days after the appeal court’s decision on the sentencing, which in this case upheld the death sentence of Saddam.

    BTW, Just to highlight one thing here reported about:
    began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday — the day Saddam was hanged in Baghdad — and on Sunday for Shiites.
    Any Muslim believe in Islam, or he is truly Muslim, this Eid “Eid Al-Adha” from timing for starting the Hajj and finishing Hajj set accordingly in Macca and all Muslims follow the steps to finish the Hajj in 10 days and they celebrating after that.
    In Iraq which I mentioned long ago this damming thing by who claimed as Sayed or Mullah” Marjiah” to planting a divisive behaviour between Muslims inside Iraq this is the problem has longstanding and a problem by those in Najaf and Karbalah Mullah in Iraq.
    Just an example of their sick behaviours …

  20. The thuggish brutality of the execution pretty much epitomizes the whole American involvement there.

  23. Jonathan
    Why do you say it is not Christian vs Islamist? I know the war between Somalia and Ethiopia is a long standing one.
    I don’t think you are being alarmist at all. This one isn’t under anybody’s control. Moving African union troops in looks like a recipe for disaster.
    I did see the President of Ethiopia reporting that they didn’t have the money to stay for any length of time, which looks a bit transparent.
    I tried following your “who am I” link but it doesn’t work.

  24. Why do you say it is not Christian vs Islamist?
    Because, although Ethiopia’s political elite is primarily Christian, a plurality of its citizens are Muslim, and it has a good deal of internal ethnic and religious unrest. It’s a misnomer to refer to Ethiopia as a “Christian country,” as many of the partisans in the conflict (on both sides) are doing.
    Moving African union troops in looks like a recipe for disaster.
    Not as much of a disaster as letting the Ethiopians stay, letting the country return to anarcho-warlordism or bringing in a Western-led peacekeeping force. An African force, especially if led by countries with no local interests of their own, is IMO the only thing that has a prayer of stabilizing the country long enough for negotiations to happen. The trouble is that I don’t think anyone’s very interested in talking, nor is Ethiopia going to leave very easily.
    I recently had a format change; the “who am I” link should work now.

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