Washington’s “democracy” in Iraq hangs 13 political prisoners

The death sentences were carried out less than a week after rival Kurdish, Sunni and secular political parties issued a public demand that the ruling Shiite United Iraqi Alliance withdraw Jafari as its candidate for prime minister and name a substitute. A Jafari adviser who witnessed the executions, Bassam Ridha, declared, “The prime minister is not soft.” Ridha suggested that deposed president Saddam Hussein could soon take his place on the gallows.

The executions were videotaped, which underscores the aim of using them as a means of state intimidation. The 13 prisoners were all condemned to death for their alleged role in armed actions against the US occupation forces or their Iraqi allies. They were the first to be executed for participation in such acts—previous executions under Jafari have been limited to charges of rape and murder not linked to politics.

There are hundreds of prisoners already on death row in Baghdad, so a wave of judicially sanctioned killings could soon supplement the mass murder being carried out by the death squads of the US-established regime.

Mass murder is not too strong a term to describe conditions in this tortured country. On March 9, the Washington Post published a front-page examination of the explosion of death squad killings since the February 22 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra—a provocation for which no armed group, including Al Qaeda in Iraq, has taken responsibility.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/iraq-m11.shtml