Article:
This week's article dealt with a young Iraqi woman named Samar Saed Abdullah who is currently on death row for the murder of three of her family members that she says she didn't commit but she confessed to. After numerous beatings and tortures from the Iraqi police, who knew she was innocent according to court documents, she confessed to helping her then fiancee steal and murder her uncle, aunt and cousin. Even with many groups lobbying for a retrial, the Iraqi Ministry of Justice says the legal proccess was fair and just and have moved her to Baghdad's maximum security prison where Saddam Hussein was killed in 2006. Her parents have sold all their poccessions to help with her legal options and she says she just wants to go home and live with her parents.
Reaction:
I thought this was an interesting article because although it's many American groups lobbying for her freedom, these same people are content to let innocent Americans die by capital punishment. This isn't a big shock to me because looking back at our history i.e. the Salem Witch Trials and the recent overturns of convictions using DNA, we can kind of see that we aren't the best judges. The main question is, are we turning the Iraqi people into another America or is it simply because women don't have a large voice in the world?
www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/09/01/iraq.deathpenalty.woman/index.html
2 comments:
There is also a big point to be made about the Guantanamo detainees that were waterboarded and then gave confessions. Is it even ethical to use the confessions obtained through torture, much less to come to a death sentence, which should be even more unquestionably honest.
It seems to me that if you are beat and tortured enough you will confess to killing a dinasaur! Of course under deress she is going to say that she did these things, so how is that even giving her a fair trial if she is already punished before she can say if she did it ornot.
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