Editor's Comment: News of 3 Iraqi women sentenced to be hanged on March 3 came as a shock even to seasoned monitors of U.S. atrocities in Iraq like myself. Intellectually, I have known for a long time the heartlessness and savagery of which the U.S. government is capable. One doesn't have to look far back in U.S. foreign policy to see it. Their recent history - their destruction of the cradle of our humanity, their slaughter of about a million Iraqi people since 2003 (add another million under the Bill Clinton sanctions of 1992-2000) - and their blunt-force oppression of human rights everywhere has taught me well. But somehow ... news of their plans to execute these 3 women ... women ... women who fought back ... I guess it somehow rekindled the fire within me. Where did Wassan Talib ... Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Muhammad find the courage to fight back? Where?
In another article we featured today by Arthur Shaw (We Didn't Do It) I published some photos of Iraqi victims of the holocaust executed by the U.S. government upon the people of Iraq. I personally force myself to look at photographs like these on a weekly basis. It helps me come face to face with what this country is doing to my fellow human beings. Paradoxically, this practice keeps me from becoming immune to the suffering of the Iraqi people. When we read about it - it's one thing. When we look at the photos - it's quite another. We also publish some of these photographs from time to time on Axis of Logic.
Where did these 3 Iraqi women find the courage to fight back? Where? It's an easy question ... but a hard, hard answer. I found the answer in the photographs I looked at ... and published on the Internet today. Where did these women find their courage? The camo-dressed thugs - the ones who dropped bombs on their homes ... the ones who broke down their front doors, humiliated their husbands, raped them and terrorized their children ... these are the ones - the ones who killed their babies - who opened them to the courage that lay deep within their hearts.
Oh don't ask ... I don't know the details. If it wasn't the baby or assault on Wassan or Zainab or Liqa ... it was the baby or assault of a sister ... or a friend ... or a neighbor or the murder of one of their husbands, lovers or brothers. But of this much we can be certain: These 3 women are sentenced to execution by hanging for defending their country, their homes ... and their babies. They are being hanged for carrying out successful military attacks against those who killed their babies, destroyed their homes and their country. They are being hanged for striking back against the invading, occupying U.S. government - whether that government is dressed in the camo-fatigues of a US soldier or Marine - or in the uniform of the U.S.-backed and installed puppet regime now called "The Iraqi Government" - by the corporate media.
We must all now do a death-watch for these 3 women - who are sentenced to hang 11 days from today on March 3 - their "date". We also reject categorically the right of the puppet government in Iraq to execute a 4th Iraqi woman, Samar Sa’ad Abdullah, who has been sentenced to death under the new U.S.-backed death penalty in Iraq on other charges.
These women are being hanged for us. Why for us you ask? Without hesitation - they are being hanged for us because they were captured on the front lines of our resistance. Yes - "our resistance" - against the imperical thugs who are making war - not only upon the Iraqi people - but also upon you and me and our families. We must do a death watch and we must grieve their deaths and the suffering undergone by whatever remains of their families.
We must grieve with and for them - and we must not let their killers escape. We must avenge their murders by bringing their killers to justice. Their killers reside in the body politic organized under both - the Republican and Democratc parties in the United States and in the government of the ever-colonizing "United Kingdom" under the fire this time of Tony Blair. Wherever you reside join the resistance protests which will be carried out throughout the world on the 4th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq. Here in the U.S. - come to Washington DC on March 17 and join us as we mobilize to force the Democrats to defund the war and bring the troops home ... not in 2008 but ... NOW.
The 3 women ... Wassan Talib ... Zainab Fadhil ... and their sister, Liqa Muhammad are our heroes ... and our martyrs. If things go as planned by the killers, it will be with great sadness that we see them taken down by these cowards. It's with even greater responsibility that we carry on after they leave us. The blood of the martyr has always been the seed of revolution. - Les Blough, Editor
Iraqi women to hang for acts of resistance
By LeiLani Dowell
Workers World Newspaper
Published Feb 17, 2007 7:56 AM
At a time when U.S. occupation troops and puppet Iraqi troops have committed hundreds of thousands of murders of Iraqi civilians, three women are being executed for their alleged role in the armed resistance. The Supreme Iraqi Criminal Court has sentenced the women to death by hanging, with the executions set for March 3 in Baghdad.
According to attorney Walid Hayali of the Iraqi Lawyers Union, 31-year-old Wassan Talib has been charged with the killing of five police officers in an attack on the police; 25-year-old Zainab Fadhil was charged for an attack on a joint patrol of the Iraqi and U.S. armies in Baghdad; and 26-year-old Liqa Muhammad was charged with the killing of an official in the Green Zone in the course of a kidnapping.
The attorney points out that the women were denied legal counsel before and during the trial, and therefore there was no lawyer present to appeal the convictions.
Muhammad is still nursing a child she recently gave birth to in prison. Talib has a 3-year-old daughter with her in the prison.
A fourth woman, Samar Sa’ad Abdullah, has been sentenced to execution for the murder of several family members, which she has denied. (amnesty.org)
Amnesty International notes that the Iraqi interim government reinstated the death penalty in August 2004, and that at least 65 people were executed in 2006 following the ruling. AI states that on Sept. 6 alone, 27 people were reportedly hanged, and 11 more on Sept. 21.
The BRussell’s Tribunal says in a statement, “[This] is a horrible proof that the illegal executions of Saddam Hussein and other Baath leaders were not ‘isolated’ or ‘exceptional’ incidents, but that they laid the groundwork for employment by the Iraqi ruling clique of ‘judicially sanctioned’ executions as a legitimate ‘measure’ against those who oppose their puppet regime and the illegal U.S. occupation.”
E-mail: ldowell@workers.org
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