BAGHDAD, 26 November 2005 — Saddam Hussein may be fighting for his life in court but he still mesmerizes Abu Hussein, a former torturer and hangman for the toppled leader who executed hundreds of Iraqis with the noose or the bullet.
“I cry every time I think that he is on trial. I pray for his strength and freedom. Saddam must come back to rule Iraq,” he told Reuters in an interview yesterday. “I am ready to return to my job if Saddam comes back.” Saddam will face prosecutors again on Monday in a trial that Iraqi officials hope will help bury Iraq’s violent past and demoralize his supporters waging a Sunni Arab insurgency.
He could face the death sentence for crimes against humanity. But one of the men who carried out his summary executions still believes in Saddam’s form of justice imposed in a country where he was a cult figure.
Recalling his time as a hangman at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in the 1980s, Abu Hussein said a new batch of political prisoners was brought in without charge every week.
Deserters from Iraq’s war with Iran faced the firing squad. Prisoners who had insulted Saddam were hanged because it was crueler, said Abu Hussein, who declined to give his full name.
“A firing squad is more compassionate because people usually died immediately. But hanging is cruel because it can take time to die. If they don’t die, we started over again,” he said. Prisoners in red uniforms and with black hoods over their heads were asked if they had a last request as the noose was tightened.
“Sometimes we would hang them upside down and beat their feet with clubs. Or we would electrocute them,” he said.
“One of the worst things was putting 10 people in a one-square-meter room for weeks. They had a brief break every day and were allowed the toilet every three days,” he said.
Three executions were carried out each Monday and Thursday. One day Saddam’s feared son Uday showed up and asked about eight political prisoners standing nearby. He ordered their immediate execution, said Abu Hussein.
A father of three, Abu Hussein said watching men writhe in agony as they died sometimes made him cry. But he said nobody could afford to defy orders in Saddam’s Iraq.
“We would have been killed on the spot. One time this executioner was one hour late in hanging someone and he was himself hanged. What could we do? All of this had a toll on us,” he said.
He sometimes broke the rules and allowed prisoners to inform their families of their whereabouts in the prison, which held thousands before their execution. But the mention of Saddam turns him into a hard man prepared to torture and kill.
