Executing Saddam's Half-Brother

With or without mobile video showing the execution of Saddam, which contradicts the official version that it went according to the law the execution would have been controversial. Saddam supporters within and outside Iraq would have found other reasons to condemn it as they did before the publication on the net of that mobile video. The witnesses and the executioner pleasure wasn't a quiet execution but to express their feelings towards Saddam. When he was in power, it was frightening even to mention his name in public without reverence for fear of being persecuted.

There was the case of an Iraqi citizen who was brutally tortured because he was caught with a banknote. On the face of Saddam, he had written a phone number. The scene in the execution room was a way to show defiance in a vengeful way to Saddam. Now they could insult him in face after being liberated from his forces that were his eyes and ears in every corner of Iraq.

The execution of Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and former chief judge Awad al-Bandar will have little resonance as their arrest, trial and verdict didn’t get the same publicity as that of Saddam. The Iraqi government will be more careful about the scene of their execution as the mobile video about Saddam execution will make it take more precautions.

Cancelling their execution means cancelling that of those who committed lesser crime. But in view of the situation in Iraq and the Iraqi government intent on “opening” a new chapter, any leniency will be as softening on past atrocities that are still fresh in the memory of a large section of the Iraqi society.

Symbolically, any execution of this kind is an execution of a past. But the present has its daily atrocities incarnated in daily violence. Time will tell who are/were the best rulers of Iraq