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| Iraq |
| Saddam’s Olympic Free-style Execution Team |
| 2003-05-16 |
| Film has been uncovered showing Saddam Hussein's security police attaching explosives to three men, then blowing them up. The undated footage, believed to be from the 1980s, shows men in the uniforms of Iraqi security officers strapping what appears to be explosives to one of the blindfolded men. Wires were then attached to a large vehicle battery in the Iraqi desert. "You're going to kill me, you're going to kill me even if I confess," wails the man, apparently accused of being an Iranian agent at the height of the Iran-Iraq war. The man waits for death and a few seconds later, he disappears in a cloud of smoke and dust. In the next shot, bloodied remains lie in the sand. The next man is brought up to the same spot and made to kneel. He, too, appears to be blown up, followed by the third. The executions were captured on film obtained by the Reuters news agency. It begins with uniformed Iraqi army officers and what appear to be intelligence officials in civilian clothes descending from a bus in the desert with the condemned men. An Iraqi army major reads out a court ruling which says the three men are Iranian agents. It says they killed several children and a university student when they put a hand grenade into a packet of baby milk in a Baghdad square in December, 1984. Is "baby milk" an Iraqi national fetish?! A military intelligence officer declares that, by presidential decree, "the Revolutionary Court dated February 12, 1985, case number 180, has ordered the death by hanging" of the three. But they were not hanged. The Iraqi officials applaud politely when the officer states who signed the death warrant: "Saddam Hussein, the President." Saddam's security police were convicted of a 1985 bomb attack that killed children in Baghdad. Don't quite understand that last sentence... Seems like extraneous and irrelevant information tacked on awkwardly. |
| Posted by:Dar |
| #1 Oh, duh--after re-reading the paragraph, I guess that means the security police themselves may have been responsible for the bombing these guys were accused of. I'll go take my medication now... |
| Posted by: Dar 2003-05-16 09:57:47 |