Videographer to Saddam Execution Speaks
Early this morning Fox News showed parts of a video of Saddam Hussein’s hanging. In it you see a group of black masked men lead the Butcher of Baghdad to the gallows and put a noose made of thick rope around his neck. Fox News also showed a picture of Saddam after the execution. He was lying on the floor covered in a shroud. Only his head was showing; it laying to his right in an unnatural position.
Newsweek has testimony from the man who videotaped the execution, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s official videographer Ali Al Massedy:
Ali Al Massedy was 3 feet away from Saddam Hussein when he died. The 38 year old, normally Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s official videographer, was the man responsible for filming the late dictator’s execution at dawn on Saturday. “I saw fear, he was afraid,” Ali told NEWSWEEK minutes after returning from the execution. Wearing a rumpled green suit and holding a Sony HDTV video camera in his right hand, Ali recalled the dictator’s last moments. “He was saying things about injustice, about resistance, about how these guys are terrorists,” he says. On the way to the gallows, according to Ali, “Saddam said, ‘Iraq without me is nothing.’”
Ali says he followed Saddam up the gallows steps, escorted by two guards. He stood over the hole and filmed from close quarters as Saddam dropped through—from “me to you,” he said, crouching down to show how he shot the scene. The distance, he said, was “about one meter,” he said. “He died absolutely, he died instantly.” Ali said Saddam’s body twitched, “shaking, very shaking,” but “no blood,” he said, and “no spit.”
The irony of a man who embodied injustice and smashed resistance crying out both is fitting. Yet in his final bout of megalomaniacal egotism he might have gotten something right. Iraq might not be anything without a strongman holding the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia together. That is the challenge for the embryonic state. Can she survive intact without a dictator?
“‘I Saw Fear, He Was Afraid’”
