Execution of Saddam Hussein - Reactions in Media

Reactions in Media

Since the release of the amateur video footage of the execution, several commentators have criticized the atmosphere of the hanging. John Simpson of BBC News stated that the execution "is shown to be an ugly, degrading business, which was more reminiscent of a public hanging in the 18th century than a considered act of 21st century official justice." Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq, of Queen Mary, University of London stated that the showing of the execution on television "conforms to a brutal logic that Saddam Hussein used himself" and went further by saying that "this isn't even victor's justice, this is the tawdry work of an insecure government", particularly since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki forced through Saddam's execution just four days after the appeals court upheld his conviction. The Times commented in its online edition that, in the moments immediately preceding the hanging, "the scene had begun to resemble a medieval execution or a wild hanging in Texas" amid repeated instances of taunts hurled at Saddam that drowned out the lonely voice of an unidentified person calling for calm in the face of the gravity of the situation. Writing in The Hindu of India, Siddharth Varadarajan compared the filming and circulation of Saddam's execution video to the picture postcards of American lynchings of African-American men that were popular in the Deep South in the early years of the 20th century. John Burns and Marc Santora, writing in The New York Times, described the execution as "a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect, on the video recordings, of making Mr. Hussein, a mass murderer, appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shi'ites who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs." The British Pakistani writer Tariq Ali denounced the proceedings, contrasting favorably the trials of Nazi criminals after World War II with the trial of Saddam, "Where Nuremberg was a more dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam's trial has, till now, been the crudest and most grotesque."