The Muslim Woman

Yes, this absurd news is true. The Supreme Iraqi Criminal Court has sentenced the women to death by hanging, with the executions set for March 3 in Baghdad. All charged with ‘offences against the public welfare’ by a government that cannot even provide electricity but fills the streets with dead bodies. According to attorney Walid Hayali of the Iraqi Lawyers Union, Wassan Talib, 31, has been charged with the killing of five police officers in an attack on the police, Zainab Fadhil, 25, was charged for an attack on a joint patrol of the Iraqi and U.S. armies in Baghdad while Liqa Muhammad, 26, was charged with the killing of an official in the Green Zone in the course of a kidnapping. None of the three women was permitted to see a lawyer. The trials to which they were subject are illegal under international law. All three are prisoners of war with protected rights under the Third Geneva Convention. Their execution would not only be illegal but would also be immoral. Civilization around the world condemns the death penalty while Iraq’s feudal leaders make a public spectacle of executions. Just re-think this: They are being hanged for carrying out successful military attacks against those who killed their babies, destroyed their homes and who tried to molest them. As Layla Anwar in An Arab Woman Blues – Reflections in a sealed bottle… writes What kind of ‘men’ throw the women of their own country in filthy jails and am sure these women were raped too, with no trial and no real charges? Execute the women of Iraq, young and old. Execute anyone who speaks out against both the occupation by America and Iran. This is it. This is what it boils down to. Iraqi women are testament to the life of the nation of Iraq. The United States and its local conspirators, in creating hundreds of thousands of widows and reducing life in Iraq to a struggle for bare survival, have placed women in the crosshairs and now on the gallows. Women are always the first and last victims of war. There is no honor in murdering women. Occupation is the highest form of dictatorship. It is not these three women who should be prosecuted rather it is this government and its foreign paymaster. Image Read

Samar Saed Abdullah a 25 year old woman suffering in the al-Kadhimiya Women’s Prison in Baghdad and is ‘living’ here for the past two years, would go to the gallows by next Wednesday, why? Well, for a crime which she wasn’t even a part of! Her ‘shauhar’ slaughtered three of his kinsmen and left the scene. As a consequence of which, the authorities hawked upon the vulnerable wife and imprisoned the innocent person. The Iraqi authorities severed battered her till the extent she confessed the crime, which actually was committed by her ‘detestable’ husband. While talking with CNN, with her wet eyes, she shared her grief and said that she is not able to sleep especially on Wednesdays because that is the day appointed for executions, hence, she is not able to relax the whole day. She was sentenced to death by hanging for being an accessory to the murder of three members of her uncle’s family. She explained repeatedly, that she hasn’t committed any crime and that she is not being taken seriously by the judicial authorities. She even goes on to say that she has a desire to live and so, is ready to face life imprisonment, twenty years in prison, for the ‘crime’, which she had (not) committed and hence, she must not be executed. However, judge refused to hear anything in her defense. A person in authority has asserted that Samar is out of legal option. Her parents too had sold their each and every possession just to save their innocent girl. An organization working for the emancipation of native women has offered help to the victim. They are fighting for her life. She is innocent, terrified of being executed. She doesn’t know that her appeal for the sentence has already been failed; her parents do not have the courage to tell her. However, her mother too is trying her utmost to save her life, she has framed an application, addressing it to the President of Iraq for her liberation but is still in dilemma whether next Wednesday would be the last day of her daughter’s life or not. Read