Category Archives: 21st Century

2006: The family of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi

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On this date in 2006, a family of Iraqis was taken prisoner and shot by a group of American soldiers.

This date’s entry is, to be sure, well into and even across the zone of borderline executions: it was crime whose authors are serving long prison sentences (although they ducked execution themselves).

It has the barest trappings of execution, enough to give that name descriptively to the killings — but maybe a little more than that, too, for this is the story of an occupation army whose “bad eggs” are endowed with the power of life and death over their subject population

“We’ve all killed Hadjis, but I’ve been here twice and I still never fucked one of these bitches.”

This is an excerpt of a London Guardian article called “The blackest hearts: War crimes in Iraq,” which is itself an excerpt from a book its author published titled Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death.

Barker had already picked the target. There was a house, not far away, where there was only one male and three females during the day – a husband, wife and two daughters. One was young, but the other was pretty hot, at least for a Hadji chick. Witnesses were a problem, though; they knew they couldn’t leave anyone alive. Barker asked Green if he was willing to take care of that, even if women and kids were involved. “Absolutely,” Green said. “It don’t make any difference to me.”

Green — Steven Green — is the troubled private who would do the shooting, and the one over whose life a jury wrangled over for 10 hours before finally sparing him lethal injection.

Sneaking up on the house, the soldiers corralled the whole family into the bedroom. After they had recovered the family’s AK-47 and Green had confirmed it was locked and loaded, Barker and Cortez left, yanking Abeer behind them. Spielman set up guard in the doorway between the foyer and living room, while Cortez shoved Abeer into the living room, pushed her down, and Barker pinned her outstretched arms down with his knees.

…

As Green was executing the family, Cortez finished raping Abeer and switched positions with Barker. Green came out of the bedroom and announced to Barker and Cortez, “They’re all dead. I killed them all.” Cortez held Abeer down and Green raped her. Then Cortez pushed a pillow over her face, still pinning her arms with his knees. Green grabbed the AK, pointed the gun at the pillow, and fired one shot, killing Abeer.

The men were becoming extremely frenzied and agitated now. Barker brought a kerosene lamp he had found in the kitchen and dumped the contents on Abeer. Spielman handed a lighter to either Barker or Cortez, who lit the flame. Spielman went to the bedroom and found some blankets to throw on the body to stoke the fire.

The four men ran back the way they had come. When they arrived at the TCP, they were out of breath, manic, animated. They began talking rapid-fire about how great that was, how well done. They all agreed that was awesome, that was cool.

Only after Green was discharged did the crime come fully to light.

At Green’s sentencing in the anomalous confines of Kentucky — he was the first former soldier prosecuted in U.S. civilian court for crimes committed overseas under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act — a cousin of Abeer’s murdered parents

spoke last, praising his slain family members and criticising the jury’s reluctance to execute Green. He concluded by turning to Green and saying, “Abeer will follow you and chase you in your nightmares. May God damn you.”

This incident is the subject of the 2007 film Redacted.

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2006: Two al-Qaeda militants for the murder of a U.S. diplomat

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On this date in 2006, Jordan hanged Salem bin Suweid, a Libyan, and Yasser Freihat, a Jordanian, for the murder of an American diplomat.

USAID representative Laurence Foley was gunned down leaving for work at the American embassy in October of 2002.

Jordan, generally a staunch U.S. ally, was quick to downplay any wider significance. “We are fairly certain that we will catch the perpetrators and will [bring] them to justice,” said government spokesman Mohammed al-Adwan.

Bin Suweid and Freihat were convicted of the assassination as part of a cell allegedly run by Jordanian-born al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who would himself be assassinated in an American bombing later in 2006.

Jordan was no more eager to stir emotions over this day’s hangings than over the perpetrators’ crime. But one analyst noted to the Associated Press that it was an unusual foray into executing al-Qaeda operatives as against less augustly credentialed Islamic militants. Jordan’s Hashemite dynasty knows how to keep its head down in dangerous times.

“It shows that Jordan doesn’t want its territory to be a playground for terrorists and sets out a deterrent for the future that Jordanian society, as tolerant as it can be, is very strict regarding the rash wanton murder of innocent civilians.”

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2010: Jihan Mohammed Ali and Atef Rohyum Abd El Al Rohyum, lovers

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You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

As of this date last year, the latterly deposed Hosni Mubarak still held power of life and death over subjects.

And on this date in 2010, he used it to turn thumbs-down to both Jihan Mohammed Ali and Atef Rohyum Abd El Al Rohyum.

Those two were condemned for the 2004 murder of Jihan’s husband, but Jihan apparently claimed to have acted alone, involving her lover only as an after-the-fact accessory to move the body.

(You know what they say … friends help you move. Good friends help you move bodies.)

Atef’s attempts to parlay this information into a new trial or some form of executive mercy fell on deaf ears, prompting a fruitless Amnesty International appeal that Egypt was risking a wrongful execution.

The two were executed on the same day, though not executed together; Jihan hanged in al-Kanater prison outside Cairo, while Atef was put to death in Isti’naf prison.

We suspect that ex-President Mubarak’s regrets, if any, run more to the prosaic opportunities missed in the maintenance and exploitation of power. But given the events of recent months, maybe his soul and his regime alike could have profited from fewer revengeful spirits like Atef.

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2006: Ali Afrawi and Mehdi Nawaseri

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Among the numerous ethnicities subject to rough treatment in Iran are Ahwazi Arabs, a minority concentrated in oil-rich Khuzestan, right on the border with southern Iraq. It was one of the bloodiest theaters of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980’s.

17-year-old Ali Afrawi

On this date in 2006, two young Ahwazi Arabs were publicly hanged in Ahvaz (Ahwaz) for their alleged participation in a separatist bombing campaign there in 2005-2006.

Heady days for the dirty war unleashed by America’s Iraq invasion. Iranian officials slated the “treacherous and criminal Britain” (occupying the adjacent region of Iraq) for backing the Ahvaz bombings. Confessions to that effect extracted from today’s two principals were broadcast the evening before their execution.

Afrawi and Nawaseri, meanwhile, were only the tip of the iceberg for a spree of evidently political trials against Ahwazis that year.

The wider Ahwazi population continues to face a troubling human rights situation (pdf), seemingly subject to ethnic cleansing meant to scotch any potential for Ahwazi nationalist sentiment and keep oil wealth in the hands of Tehran.

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2004: Former vice-governor Wang Huaizhong

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On this date in 2004, the former deputy governor of China’s Anhui province was executed for official corruption.

It was just weeks after Wang’s conviction for grifting some 100 million yuan in real estate transactions dating back to the mid 1990’s.

We suppose Wang did his appeals no favors by steadfastly denying guilt — although he might have reckoned that the national “determination … to fight corruption” thwarted any such plan.

Instead of confessing to his crimes, Wang had stood against the public prosecutors and even continued to seek bribes during the investigation from some private business owners, said Wang Huanhai, head of the investigation team.

According to the prosecutor, Wang attempted to use the bribe to buy over more relations, hoping the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Chinese Communist Party would spare him from being inquisited.

During the first trial on Dec. 29, 2003, Wang denied all the allegations, but in the latest trial confessed to most of the crimes and argued for a light penalty on the grounds that the bribes he had taken were not big enough to justify a death penalty.

His request was turned down, given the amount involved in the case as well as his resistance to investigation.

Wang’s prosecutors said he was an orphan and had climbed up the social ladder with an inferiority complex. “That’s why he was dictatorial and could not stand anyone questioning him,” said Wang Huanhai, “Nor did he ever confess to his wrongdoing in public.”

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2011: Rashid al Rashidi, Mousa mosque murderer

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This morning in Dubai, Emirati sailor Rashid al Rashidi was executed by firing squad for raping and murdering four-year-old Moosa (Mousa) Mukhtiar Ahmed in a mosque washroom.

The pedophiliac crime on the first day of Eid al-Adha in 2009 shocked the United Arab Emirates. Eleven judges have okayed the death sentence; even one of al Rashidi’s own lawyers demonstratively resigned himself from the case of “the suspect who brought shame to mankind.”

The terrified al Rashidi met his death at a Dubai shooting range this morning, begging for God’s forgiveness … and also that of his victim’s relatives, five of whom witnessed the execution.

Unsurprisingly, the aggrieved family wasn’t biting.

“I will never forgive him,” Mousa’s father reportedly told the Grand Mufti to whom al Rashidi had entrusted his contrition.

It’s the first execution in the UAE 1945: Giovanni Cerbai, partisan

  • 1726: Margaret Millar, infanticide
  • 1938: Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, Winter Palace stormer
  • 1956: Elifasi Msomi, witch doctor
  • 1854: John Tapner, the last hanged on Guernsey
  • 1945: Anacleto Diaz, Philippines Supreme Court Justice
  • 1973: Tom Masaba, Sebastino Namirundu, and 10 other Uganda Fronsana rebels
  • 1892: Four anarchists in Jerez
  • 1794: Jacques Roux, the Red Priest, cheats the guillotine
  • 1952: Liu Qingshan and Zhang Zishan, the first corruption executions in Red China
  • 1956: Wilbert Coffin
  • 1905: Samuel McCue, mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia

    • 2011: Martin Link

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    Minutes past midnight today, Central Daylight Time, Martin Link died by lethal injection at Missouri’s Bonne Terre state prison.

    It’s just Missouri’s second execution since 2005, a marked decline from its five-per-year clip over the decade preceding.*

    Condemned for raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl in 1991, Link “showed little willingness to fight the death penalty,” according to the Kansas City Star. (Not so little that he actually dropped appeals, mind.) He at least once attempted suicide in prison.

    In common with many present-day U.S. executions, Link’s was also shaped by the nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental, one of the essential drugs in the traditional lethal injection cocktail.

    (It’s an anesthetic, the first of three drugs administered and used for the purpose of inducing rapid unconsciousness so the other two can get to the killing business … though the sodium thiopental dose is itself potentially lethal, and some states have experimented with lethal injections using only that one drug.)

    While other thiopental-scarce jurisdictions have moved towards alternative chemicals and injection procedures, Missouri did a classic three-drug injection using some of its dwindling stockpile — which was due to expire on March 1, anyway. What the plan might be for the next Show-Me State execution, whenever that might be, nobody seems ready to say. If recent trends are any indication, they’ve got plenty of time to work it out.

    The chemical compounds, no doubt, were the last things on the minds of those directly concerned. Both the victim’s family and the investigating police officers reportedly planned to observe the procedure with some satisfaction.

    “It was such a horrendous crime,” one of the officers told a reporter. “I’ve got a picture of that in my mind right now … of seeing the little girl and everything. It’s kind of hard to put it out of your mind.”

    * Stats per the Death Penalty Information Center’s very handy execution database.

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    2010: Six Sudanese southerners from Soba Aradi

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    On this date in 2010, six men from war-torn southern Sudan were hanged in Khartoum’s Kober prison for a deadly 2005 riot.

    The protracted north-south Sudanese civil war had only just abated with a tenuous peace treaty earlier in 2005, when Sudanese security surrounded the refugee camp-cum-suburb of Soba Aradi outside Khartoum in May 2005 in a sudden bid to forcibly resettle its predominantly southern population.

    The resulting riots burned down a police station and claimed around 13 policemen’s lives, along with many civilians.

    Nasty.

    “We were forced to protest when a police officer shot a seven year old boy three times in the head”, said Mr. Mile Michael, a South Sudanese living in the area since 1986.

    Following the death of the young boy, the slum dwellers burnt down the police office in the area killing some of the officers with machetes and knives in a revenge attack. “We all participated in the burning of the police office because they deceived us that they would support us in resisting the soldiers but they were the first to kill our children, so we were willing to sacrifice ourselves for our children.”

    While dozens were rounded up, Amnesty International charged that little save forced confessions and unfair trials distinguished the specific few marked out for hanging.

    Sudan’s north-south sectional conflict is the backdrop to this month’s election, which might set the south on a path to political independence from the north.

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    2010: Liu Lieyong and Chen Xiaohui, Hubei gangsters

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    Two “prime members” — in the words of the Xinhua report — of a central China gang were executed on this date last year in Hubei province.

    Liu Lieyong* was sentenced to death for the crimes of organizing and leading an organized criminal gang, murder, blackmail, illegal possession of arms and gambling, said a statement from the SPC.

    Chen Xiaohui was convicted of participating in an organized criminal gang, murder, intentional injury, inciting disorder and illegal possession of arms.

    …

    Another 19 people convicted in the case received jail terms from one year with two-year reprieve to suspended death sentences, said the statement.

    The crime gang, founded by Liu in the city of Xiantao in Hubei in 2001, had opened casinos, which were illegal in China, illegally forced the transfer of shares in local bus companies and manipulated local cement and food markets.

    Liu instructed gang members, including Chen, to murder one person. Chen was also held responsible for another death and nine injuries, the statement said.

    The statement did not give details about their victims. According to a report in the Wuhan Morning Post in February 2008, one of the victims was Hu Dongfeng, head of a rival gang in Xiantao. Six of Liu’s gang members ambushed him and shot him dead.

    * Not to be confused with the singer and actress Liu Liyang.

    Part of the Themed Set: 2010.

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    2010: Gary Johnson

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    “I never done anything in my life to anybody,” insisted 59-year-old Gary Johnson as he received on this date last year a lethal injection for a 1986 double homicide.

    Life may be a journey and not a destination, but Johnson didn’t have far to travel: he was convicted of a murder just 10 miles outside Huntsville, where the state death house resides.

    Specifically, he and his brother Terry allegedly burgled a ranch — and then shot dead the two men who responded to a concerned neighbor’s call about the suspicious activity. One of the victims was heard begging for his life before being shot execution-style.

    (Terry Johnson copped a plea and is serving a 99-year sentence. Gary Johnson took his chances at trial.)

    Without going so far as to advance any particular brief for Johnson’s actual innocence, we’re compelled to retch a little at this footnote to the Associated Press wire story:

    [Gary Johnson’s trial prosecutor Frank] Blazek said investigators found the same slogan etched in concrete outside Johnson’s home and on a T-shirt he was wearing in a photograph: ”Kill them all and let God sort them out.”

    What … like the everyday Metallica shirt? Or did he mean the Special Forces icon?*

    ”It indicated a callousness about human life,” he said.

    This guy needs to get out more.

    Similar fatuous claims about pop-death iconography as indicia of guilt were leveraged in the now-infamous Cameron Willingham case; there’s something rather troubling about the fact that a quarter-century on, and even with the Willingham embarrassment fresh in the headlines, the prosecutor still finds this inconsequential sidelight compelling enough to mention — and an institutional journalist finds it serious enough to print.

    * The last link in this sentence was formerly to a Special Forces gear page showing items for sale with this same logo; the link was in no way sponsored (no link on this site will ever be sponsored), and it was completely relevant to the text since it not only displayed the message in question but the fact that that message is a going commercial concern — i.e., that one can easily buy a shirt with the “damning” slogan. Twenty-eight months after that link was posted, a Google bot declared it unnatural and penalized not my site but the recipient of the link. As usual, Google’s error-prone summary judgments come with no channel for appeal. Though I’ve reluctantly altered the link since the other site doesn’t deserve Google’s vindictiveness, I note here, for the record and biliously, the editorial muscle unjustifiably arrogated by Google’s slipshod algorithm police.

    Part of the Themed Set: 2010.

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