Video of Saddam's Body After the Hanging

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Spanish translation (en Español).

Here is another in the series of videos of Saddam Hussein's hanging. First the notorious video of his hanging was released, then this surreptitious of his body in a casket shot by two apparently Shia morgue workers, and last a video of his funeral in Tikrit. All of the videos are now available on this site.

In this video, what appears to be two Shia morgue workers (we can tell they are Shia by the name of one of them - Abu Ali is a Shia name - and the fact that they are friends) are surreptitiously filming the body on a gurney hurriedly as if they are afraid of being caught. They pull the cover aside and quickly film the head of the dead Saddam, then cover it back up and rush away.

Saddam has bruises on his face, his head grotesquely to one side and his neck is ripped open and exposed, with a nasty bright-red gash from where the rope cut it. There are false rumors floating around the Net that the video is a fake. The pro-Sunni, anti-Shia, anti-Iranian racist website Islam Online alleged that the bruises on Saddam's face are evidence that his body was violated after his death.

This is may not be true; the bruises may be from the hanging itself. Another rumor is that Saddam's throat was slit after his death - the slit throat being what you see on this video. In fact, the gash on his throat was no doubt caused by the hanging itself. He may have fallen 6 feet and 7 inches when he dropped from the gallows. He probably only needed a 5-foot drop in order to kill him, according to the "Drop Tables" published in 1913.

The excessive drop is what caused the neck gash and is another example, as with the subsequent hanging of Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti that decapitated him, of a botched execution. Tikriti fell 8 feet, way too far to drop, and the excessive fall is what cut off his head.

With an excessive drop, you get a cut neck or decapitation, and with a drop that is too short, you get slow strangulation. Obviously, the Iraqi government's executioners do not know what they are doing.

This video originally appeared on Google Video but was then taken down, possibly due to inappropriate content. The version you see here is a copy that surfaced later on Youtube. Fox News translated the video in a story on the video:

Abu Ali!

- Hurry up! Hurry up!

Hurry up!

Let’s go my friend...come on man!

- I’ll fix it up for you.

I am coming. I am coming.

- Just a moment, one moment

I am coming. I am coming.

- Abu Ali, Abu Ali...You take care of this.

Ok let’s go, let’s go

- Come on my friend! Come on my friend!

Ok, I am coming. I am coming.

This video, showing obviously Shia morgue attendants disrespecting Saddam's battered body by filming it, along with the gash in his neck caused by the rope, is likely to further inflame Sunnis and worsen already horrid sectarian warfare in Iraq. It originally appeared on a Baathist website with the obvious intention of further inflaming the Sunnis of Iraq. The botching of Saddam's execution continues.

Much has been made of Saddam's execution but not a lot substantially of his trial. While it was surely more fair than Saddam's trials, a good case can be made that the trial process had serious problems. To me, it was clear that Saddam was guilty of the Dujail killings but still, fair trials are important. One characteristic of a vicious dictatorship is that it attacks the attorneys of unpopular trial suspects.

In Peru, the terrible Fujimori dictatorship (installed in a 1992 coup cheered on by the US) arrested, beat and tortured, sometimes to death, attorneys for Shining Path guerrillas. There were never any charges that the attorneys were members of the organization; it was enough that they were representing the organization.

In the US now, outrageously, the US government is refusing to promote a number of US military attorneys who represented Guantanamo detainees. Their crime? Doing their duty - that is, representing their clients too vigorously. There is no such thing as an attorney being too vigorous in defense of a client.

That Bush decision was one of many his Administration has made that adds weight to the charge that this is one of the most anti-democratic administration in the history of the nation. This administration has arguably moved the country closer to dictatorship than any prior US government, and that is no exaggeration at all.

And what of Saddam's trial? Three of Saddam's attorneys were murdered - two of them, apparently, by the Iraqi government itself. See my friend Postman Patel's post for the details - note that one was killed after being abducted by 10 men in police uniforms and another was killed by hitmen who arrived at the scene in a government vehicle.

Surely there will never be any justice for the killers of Saddam's attorneys. On what basis were those attorneys killed? Surely Saddam had a right to be represented by counsel? Surely representing Saddam in court is not a reason to kill someone?