Iraq: Three men convicted of murder, rape and kidnapping sat before the judge, awaiting their fates. But first they had to face their victims' seething families.
"They broke his arms. They broke his legs. They took out his eyeballs," one woman said at the hearing last Sunday in the city of Kut, describing what the men had done to her son. "Death penalty. I want the death penalty."
A man in the back of the crowded courtroom held a sign that said: "We do not accept any sentence less than death." Moments later, the audience got its wish.
The three alleged members of the insurgent group Ansar al-Sunna Army were condemned to be hanged "in the next 10 days," according to the sentence.
In a show of force the Iraqi government hopes will help quell the insurgency, Iraq will soon carry out its first judicial executions since the fall of Saddam Hussein. And despite objections raised by some other countries and international human rights groups, the Iraqi public is welcoming their return. "Before, the criminals thought that they would go to jail and a few months later they would be released," said Abu Muhammad, owner of Kuwait Money Exchange Co. "But now, this will stop them."
In Hussein's Iraq, execution was commonly used to suppress political dissent, and the death penalty was a punishment for 114 different crimes. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, suspended capital punishment, declaring that "the former regime used certain provisions of the penal code as a means of oppression, in violation of internationally acknowledged human rights".
Iraq's interim government revived the death penalty last August for a smaller set of violent crimes, as well as drug trafficking. The decision is believed to have been motivated by the desire to execute the now-captive Hussein, who is expected to be tried by a tribunal this summer.
"I am waiting for the day to see Saddam hanged on TV," said Salam Naji, owner of a Baghdad furniture shop. "He is behind all this violence and killings."
Now, the government has pledged to make broader use of the death penalty, as it struggles to suppress an insurgency that has taken more than 600 lives in the past month. "We will carry out the death penalty against those who kill scores of Iraqi people," interior minister Bayan Jabr said last week.
But human rights organisations have raised concerns about the Shia Muslim-led government's use of capital punishment to deter insurgent attacks. In addition, Iraqi security forces have been accused recently of summarily executing Sunni religious leaders.
In government, the sole outspoken opponent of executing Hussein has been president Jalal Talabani who said in an interview in April that he would "go on a holiday" rather than sign an order authorising Hussein's execution. Because the signatures of his two deputies would suffice, his opposition would not prevent the order from being carried out. - LA Times-Washington Post Service