SULAIMANIYAH,
Kurdistan-Iraq -- The question on people's minds in
Iraq's largest Kurdish city as they watch Saddam
Hussein's trial on television is not whether he
should be executed, but how and when.
Some argue that the ousted leader should be
convicted and put to death immediately after the
trial, which is being broadcast live on Kurdish
television.
Others want to see a series of trials, in which
Saddam is held to account for a long-term campaign
that displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds, and
for four poison-gas attacks that killed several
thousand others.
"Don't rush it; let it take years," Hero Talabani,
the wife of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, told
foreign reporters. Mrs. Talabani is the founder of a
satellite television station that has been covering
the trial.
"Let it be an example to Middle East leaders what
can happen to murderous dictators," she said. "If
Saddam dies soon, the full horror will not emerge
and people will forget quickly." |
Former dictator Saddam Hussein
Photo : AFP
|
|
A small part of Saddam's bloody legacy is on display
in a nondescript annex to the former regime's
four-story General Security Service offices in the
center of Sulaimaniyah. The one-time prison, shut
down when the Kurds achieved a measure of
independence under U.S. protection in 1991, now
serves as a museum.
Among the visitors this week were two teenage boys
who contemplated exhibits such as electrodes used in
torture sessions and a macabre noose brought from
the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
"Whatever Saddam did to the Iraqi people, let him
get the same. In front of me. Then hang him," said
14-year-old Hunar Ghareeb, who said his uncle and
cousin were killed by the regime.
He and his friend Ali, also 14, stood in a cell
reading the desperate messages that prisoners had
scratched on the walls. One such etching said: "I'm
10 years old but they claim I'm 17. Mummy and Daddy,
the Ba'athists are going to kill me and I'll never
see you again."
A museum guide who identified himself only as Halkaw
said that as many as 40 women had been held in a
single cell, where they were raped repeatedly in
front of other prisoners, including their husbands
or brothers, to pressure them to "confess."
"For Saddam, execution is too little, too little,"
said another visitor to the torture cells, Ahmed
Hassan, a 32-year-old geologist for a local oil
company. "People will feel happy when he's dead."
Faroukh Sabir Ahmed, 38, a former political prisoner
who now sells cooked brown beans on a sidewalk, had
perhaps the most imaginative idea for Saddam's
punishment.
"My suggestion is they bring Saddam here in front of
all the mothers whose children he's killed, and let
the mothers cut off sections of his flesh, bit by
bit. They can kill him thousands of times."
A few think Saddam should be left alive to see what
Iraq is becoming without him.
"I'm against execution," said Sherko Manguri, deputy
editor of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's daily
newspaper. "Let the dictator see his people
experiencing freedom and democracy -- free at last
from his rule. Every day is for him a kind of living
death."
• Distributed by World News & Features
www.washingtontimes.com
Top |
® 