fittingly, this execution comes as the mass murder contagion is, once again, raging across america... from ap: Gov. Tim Kaine denied clemency Tuesday for sniper John Allen Muhammad, clearing the way for him to be executed for the attacks that terrorized the nation's capital region for three weeks in 2002.
Muhammad was sentenced to death for killing Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a three-week spree that left 10 dead across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
He and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, also were suspected of fatal shootings in other states, including Louisiana, Alabama and Arizona.
The motive for the shootings remains murky. Malvo said Muhammad wanted to use the plot to extort $10 million from the government to set up a camp in Canada where homeless children would be trained as terrorists. But Muhammad's ex-wife has said she believes the attacks were a smoke screen for his plan to kill her and regain custody of their three children.
For the families of those killed, the day is a long time coming.
update: sniper who terrorized washington area is executed from reuters: John Allen Muhammad was executed on Tuesday for masterminding and carrying out with his teenage accomplice the 2002 sniper shootings that killed 10 people and terrified the Washington, D.C., region a year after the September 11 and the deadly anthrax attacks. The 48-year-old Muhammad was put to death by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, said Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor. "Death was pronounced at 9:11 p.m. There were no complications. Mr. Muhammad was asked if he wished to make a last statement. He did not acknowledge us or make any statement whatsoever," Traylor told reporters. "Things went very normally," Traylor added.
from new york times: China executed its former top food and drug regulator today for taking bribes to approve untested medicine as Beijing scrambled to show that it is serious about improving the safety of Chinese products.
The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court carried out the death sentence againstZheng Xiaoyu, 62, the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, soon after the country’s Supreme Court rejected his final appeal...
The official Xinhua news agency announced the execution but did not say how Mr. Zheng was killed. In most cases, court police execute prisoners by shooting them in the back of the head, though recently police have also used lethal injections.
from bbc: Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging at an unspecified location outside Baghdad's Green Zone for crimes against humanity...
from wayne madsen: Iraq's former dictator managed to avoid one of the world's most high-tech assassination efforts during the Iraq War campaign only to be allegedly discovered by U.S. forces hiding in a hole in the ground near Tikrit. There is little doubt that the trial of Saddam Hussein by a U.S. puppet government in the Green Zone of Baghdad has been a charade and a miscarriage of justice.
Saddam's death sentence decided by an Iraqi government-appointed and U.S.-approved judge on Dec. 26 was never in doubt, considering the knowledge the former Iraqi leader possesses of past crimes of the Bush family and their coterie of friends and partners in providing Iraq with much of the biological and chemical weaponry used against the Kurds, Shi'as, and Iranians.
Saddam Hussein's willingness to provide the Western media with documents and other evidence of the connivance of George H. W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Frank Carlucci, and other Reagan-Bush administration principals was made apparent to this editor in the months preceding the March 2003 American attack on Iraq.
A senior Iraqi official contacted a British colleague of this editor and passed on a personal offer from Saddam Hussein to provide an "enterprising" Western journalist with the proof of America's sanctioning of Saddam's use of U.S.-supplied chem-bio weapons during the Iran-Iraq War, including Iraq's attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja. Also included in Saddam's "package" would be top secret information regarding his role as a longtime asset for the CIA, dating from his student days in Cairo.
The essence of the offer passed to this editor via the British interlocutor was that Saddam, aware that George W. Bush was going to attack Iraq, ordered his intelligence service to gather up all incriminating evidence that would show the world that Iraq's past "weapons of mass destruction" were provided by the Reagan and Bush I administrations.
This proof undoubtedly included tape recorded conversations between Saddam and his advisers and Ronald Reagan's personal envoy to Iraq, Rumsfeld. Saddam hoped that the exposure of the Reagan-Bush administrations would embarrass Washington and derail its attack plans.
The offer from Baghdad was straightforward -- arrive in Baghdad overland from Jordan and the proof would be handed over. There was one slight hitch. Having such incriminating evidence -- documents and proof that the Reagan administration and that of George W. Bush's father aided and abetted in Saddam's military's use of chem-bio weaponry against Iranians and his own people -- would have likely made any "enterprising" Western journalist an inviting target for a number of bad actors the moment that journalist crossed into Jordanian territory from Iraq.
Ironically, Saddam Hussein was more willing to provide the media with classified and sensitive information to expose the machinations of the United States than anyone in the George W. Bush administration or that of his father.
It is very clear why the Bush administration wants Saddam dead and it has nothing to do with Saddam's alleged "crimes against humanity."
from blacklisted news/cbs news: Saddam Hussein's final moments will be videotaped by the Iraqi government, reports CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston. National Security adviser Mouffak al Rubaie says the date of the deposed dictator's execution will not be made public, to avoid possible unrest from Saddam's supporters, but everything from the signing of the final orders by the judge, to the hanging itself will be recorded.
Iraqis, members of the coalition, and international representatives will witness the execution. It's not clear whether the videotape will be broadcast on Iraqi television.
An Iraqi government official says efforts are under way to carry out the death sentence by the end of this month, indicating that they want to do the execution before the Muslim celebration of Eid, which coincides with the New Year.
Under Iraqi law, Saddam Hussein must be executed within 30 days.
"It cannot exceed 30 days. As from tomorrow [Wednesday] the sentence could be carried out at any time," appeals court judge Arif Shaheen told a news conference in Baghdad.
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from guardian: Moments before he was put to death, Troy Davis lifted his head from the gurney to which he was strapped and looked the family of Mark MacPhail, the police officer for whose murder he was convicted, directly in the eyes. "I want to talk to the MacPhail family," he said. "I was not responsible for what happened that night. I did not have a gun. I was not the one who took the life of your father, son, brother." He then appealed to his own family and friends to "keep the faith", said to the medical personnel who were about to kill him "may God have mercy on your souls", and laid his head down again. He was administered with a triple lethal injection of pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, and at 11.08pm he was pronounced dead.
