HOW TO TREAT A TERRORIST..

Here's a very biased article in today's Daily Telegraph on the lawful execution of 27 convicted terrorists at Abu Ghraid prison, in Baghdad.

Just consider the prejudice bubbling away in the very first sentence...

"The brutal excesses of Saddam Hussein's regime were relived yesterday as Iraq's new government announced that it had hanged 27 prisoners convicted of terror and criminal charges...

Nonsense. Saddam's "brutal excesses" were predicated on the fact that he murdered anyone with whom he disagreed. The only law was Saddam's law. The democratically elected Iraqi Government has determined, after due process, that these 27 captured Jihadists were guilty of terrorism, and the due penalty for that is death. The Daily Telegraph should be ashamed of itself for implying equivalence where there is none. Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, is spot on when he says..

"This is the message I have for the terrorists," he said of the hanged prisoners, "we will see that you get great punishment wherever you are. There is nothing for you but prison and punishment."

Would that the Opinion Writers in the so-called "conservative" (hah!) Daily Telegraph could demonstrate the same decisiveness when it comes to dealing with terrorists. The best way to treat a terrorist is prison and punishment, preferably execution.

Comments

[MrSmith]

From the same article:

"The death penalty is overwhelmingly supported by the Iraqi public, particularly as punishment for those who commit insurgent atrocities."

I wonder very much what the results of a real nation-wide survey of the UK would reveal about our attitudes to the death penalty...

[Mike Cunningham]

Given the knee-jerk responses of this, or even the former U.K. Government of the past twenty-five years, the response to any survey which asked for an opinion on Capital Punishment would be "Oooh, can't do much about that, you see, it's all a matter of Europe! The Articles/Regulations/Treaties (strike those not applicable) are all set in concrete, and whatever we as an individual national Government may propose, we are collectively bound to the absolute repeal of Capital Punishment! Sorry and all that, especially to the victims of terror, of plain murder, of the vast traffic in drugs; it's just that our hands are tied!"

[Hugh Green]

I wonder if Nouri Al-Maliki would have accepted the legality of his own hanging had he been captured as leader of underground armed resistance group Dawa.

[Ross]

That really is a disgracefully dishonest report by the Telegraph. Presumably the Nuremburg trials were a reliving of the Nazi regime under this reasoning because Oliver Poole evidently believes that execution for mass murder is the same as the arbitary killing of people based on their ethnicity.

[Cunningham]

>>The democratically elected Iraqi Government has determined, after due process, that these 27 captured Jihadists were guilty of terrorism,<<

Sorry David, Wrong! As frustrating as it may be, the vast majority of these prisoners (25 of the 27) were NOT convicted of terrorism, as the Justice Ministry spokesman states in the article.

Besides, given the history of Abu Ghraib, how can you be sure they were convicted "after due process", as you say?

Two examples of serious wishful thinking on your part.

[David Vance]

Cunningham,

You are right. The 25 concerned were only guilty of "murder and kidnapping" I suppose you think that is a more minor crime?

Also, given that the Courts do not operate in Abu Ghraid, why do you doubt their judgement? What evidence have you that their convictions were unsafe in any way?

[Cunningham]

>>I suppose you think that is a more minor crime?<<

zzzzzzzzzzz
The point is you said the were convicted of terrorism. They weren't.

Oh, and by the way, I do happen to think kidnapping is a more minor crime than murder or terrorism.
There are also a few judges in every country in the world who seem to believe that too.

>>What evidence have you that their convictions were unsafe in any way?<<

Exactly the same amount that you have that they were safe.
Except that I didn't claim they were or were not.

[Allan@Aberdeen]

I think that the victims of the executed criminals here were first kidnapped, then murdered: no separation between the two crimes.