Dueling Ramadan Executed
Taha Yassin Ramadan, Saddam Hussein's Vice-President and one of the co-authors of his atrocities, was executed today after an appeals court ordered the death penalty last January. He handed his will to his lawyer after Iraqi authorities carefully weighed him, avoiding the inadvertent decapitation that occurred during an earlier hanging:
Saddam Hussein's former deputy was hanged before dawn Tuesday, the fourth man to be executed in the killings of 148 Shiites following a 1982 assassination attempt against the former leader in the town of Dujail.Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was Saddam's vice president when the regime was ousted, went to the gallows on the fourth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.
Bassam al-Hassani, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the execution went smoothly, although Ramadan appeared frightened and recited the two shahadahs — a declaration of faith repeated by Muslims — "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet." ...
The execution took place at 3:05 a.m. at a prison at an Iraqi army and police base, which had been the headquarters of Saddam's military intelligence, in a predominantly Shiite district in northern Baghdad. Ramadan had been in U.S. custody but was handed over to the Iraqis about an hour before the hanging, according to al-Hassani, who witnessed the hanging.
Ramadan got convicted for his role in the judicial murders of 148 men, women, and children of Dujail after an assassination attempt on Saddam. The Iraqi government chose the town for public retribution and executed the defendants without any sort of due process or any consideration of guilt or innocence. Ramadan also got found guilty of torture and forced deportations, the same as the other Dujail defendants, including Saddam himself. The Iraqi appellate court found that Ramadan deserved the same sentence as Saddam and Barzan Ibrahim for the same crimes.
Ramadan personified the strangeness of the Saddam regime. Nothing more than a cog in Saddam's machine, he managed to make himself menacing by wielding Saddam's power as an acolyte. He conducted some of Saddam's notorious purges in order to strengthen their position and eliminate any chance of internal regime change. He also referred to the US Congress as an arm of the Israeli Knesset.
In late 2002, he offered a solution to the impasse between Iraq and the US. He challenged George Bush to a personal duel with Saddam Hussein, in a return of champion combat as an alternative to war -- a practice that died in antiquity. It showed the medieval sensibilities of perhaps the world's most brutal and perverted tyranny, and no one but the hypocritical Human Rights Watch are sorry to see the end of these monsters.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on March 20, 2007 5:55 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
Comments (3)
Posted by stackja1945![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/nav-commenters.gif)
| March 20, 2007 6:47 AM
Human Rights Watch are sorry to see the end of these monsters. Because they need monsters to protect us from. Monsters are good for the Human Rights business. But do not mention Fiddle or Huggo.
Posted by conservative democrat![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/nav-commenters.gif)
| March 20, 2007 9:02 PM
good riddance to the guy, but its only a minor side show in the horrible mess of Iraq. So we lost 3200 of our boys so we could execute a few barbarians over there. Some other brutal General or Mullah will be running Iraq in 20 years. Arabs do what Arabs do, Bush thought he could change the Middle East? How child like and naive that was. Now he's to stubborn and proud to cut his losses and get out. What a tragedy Bush has created, but we got Saddam .....or did we?
Posted by unclesmrgol![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/nav-commenters.gif)
| March 20, 2007 11:57 PM
conservative democrat,
A few of the boys were girls.