IRAQ: STOP EXECUTING PRISONERS

I call on the Al Maliki government in Iraq to end capital punishment. For a state to take a life is barbaric and cruel. I don't care what the offense, how heinous or how premeditated. No state should execute a human being. This applies especially to Iraq that has thrown off a dictator who engaged in thousands of executions. Now, it seems, the new regime is just as inhumane as the old.

Stephen Farrell reports today in The New York Times:


"BAGHDAD, July 6 — A suspected member of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who confessed to involvement in an August 2003 bomb attack that killed one of Iraq’s most prominent Shiite leaders and at least 84 other people has been hanged, a Justice Ministry official said Friday.


"The sudden announcement came three days after the suspect, Oras Muhammad Abdul-Aziz, was executed for the bombing, which killed Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, a well-known politician and cleric. The attack was one of the earliest high-profile bombings after the American invasion in March 2003."


A state has too much power. To take a life should not be in the power of a state. There are too many ways that a state can err, and of course, once taken, the person is gone forever. Even Saddam's neck should not have been put into that noose. Let the state incarcerate the convict. But let not blood be on the state's hands, even though it is on the hands of the outlaw.