Outright Assassination
Page 19
In certain cases the trial is not over when the verdict is reached. The dialog on the issues may continue for many years, particularly if the death penalty is involved or if the accused had been put to death in suspicious circumstances. Only complete clarity and the full truth can help people recover from the wound inflicted upon their consciousness.
Notes
1 Before and after Sa’adeh, when the death penalty was involved, almost all capital sentences resulted in a presidential review for a possible pardon. Sentenced criminals were routinely given a sufficient delay before execution so that their requests for pardons could be examined. If granted, clemency would usually entail a commutation to a life sentence.
2 Istijwab Jumblatt al tarikhi lil hukuma hawla istishhad Sa’adeh ome 1949 (Jumblatt’s historical interpolation to the [Lebanese] Government In Regard to Sa’adeh’s Martyrdom in 1949). Beirut: SSNP Information Bureau, 1987.
3 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution). Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002: 120–121.
4 Al-Dayar. Beirut, 1 March, 1991.
5 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Accoun of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution). Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002: 123.
6 Ibid., 124.
7 Sami Solh, Ahtakim ila al-Tarikh (I Leave it to History to Judge Me). Beirut: Dar an-Nahar, 1970: 94.
8 Ibid.
9 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution). Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002: 93.
10 Ibid., 94.
11 Beirut, 9 July, 1949.
12 According to the priest’s brother, Georges Barbari, the security forces called on the priest twice not once – at dusk on 7 July, while the trial was still in session, when they were repelled by the priest’s request for consent from the archbishop, and at midnight between 7 and 8 July. Though overlooked by Father Barbari, the first incident has been cited by at least one vital source on Sa’adeh’s execution. See George Abdul Massih, Muhadarat al-Mukhayyam al-Sayfi (Summer Camps Lecture Series): 30.
13 Najam al-Hashim, A’khir Ayyam Sa’adeh (Sa’adeh’s Last Days). Beirut: n. p., 1999: 74.
14 Said Taky ad-Din, “The Priest who confessed him” in Adel Beshara, Syrian Nationalism: An Inquiry Into the Political Philosophy of Antun Sa’adeh. Beirut: Dar Bissan, 1995: Appendix 5. Hereby referred to as “The Priest who confessed him.”
15 Said Taky ad-Din, “The Priest who confessed him.”
16 Ibid.
17 Najam al-Hashim, op. cit., 75.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution). Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002: 126.
23 Ibid.
24 Said Taky ad-Din, “The Priest who confessed him.”
25 An-Nahar. Beirut, 10 July, 1949.
26 Al-Sayyad. Beirut, 14 July, 1949.
27 Said Taky ad-Din, “The Priest who confessed him.”
28 Az-Zaman, 11 July, 1949.
29 Said Taky ad-Din, “The Priest who confessed him.”
30 Ibid.
31 Az-Zaman, 11 July, 1949.
32 Gibran Jreige, Ma’ Antun Sa’adeh (In the company of Antun Sa’adeh): 179–180.
33 Said Taky ad-Din, “The Priest who confessed him.”
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Beirut, 9 July, 1949.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Said Taky ad-Din, “The Priest who confessed him.” The firing squad aimed at the chest, since this is easier to hit than the head. A firing squad aiming at the head produces the same type of wounds as those produced by a single bullet, but bullets fired at the chest rupture the heart, large blood vessels and lungs so that the condemned person dies of haemorrhage and shock. It is not unusual for the officer in charge of the firing squad to have to give the prisoner a “coup de grace” – a pistol shot to the head to finish them off after the initial volley has failed to kill them. A bullet produces a cavity which has a volume many times that of the bullet. Cavitation is probably due to the heat dissipated when the impact of the bullet boils the water and volatile fats in the tissue which it strikes. According to Dr Le Garde, in his book Gunshot Injuries, it is proved both in theory and by experimentation, that cavitation is caused by the transfer of the momentum from the fast moving bullet to the tissue which is mostly comprised of incompressible liquid. Persons hit by bullets feel as if they have been punched – pain comes later if the victim survives long enough to feel it.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 For an in-depth account on the fate of Sa’adeh’s corpse see Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution). Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002: 132–157.
43 An-Nahar, Beirut, 11 July, 1949.
44 Ibid.
45 An-Nahar, Beirut, 15 July, 1949.
46 The Times, 18 July, 1949.
47 An-Nahar, Beirut, 21 July, 1949.
48 An-Nahar, Beirut, 22 July, 1949.
49 An-Nahar, Beirut, 20 July, 1949.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 An-Nahar, Beirut, 18 August, 1949.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Naim Mughabghab, who turned parliamentarian later on and was assassinated in 1960.
57 The Reichstag fire was a pivotal event in the establishment of Nazi Germany. At 21:15 on the night of 27 February, 1933, a Berlin fire station received an alarm call that the Reichstag building, the assembly location of the German Parliament, was ablaze. The fire was started in the Session Chamber, and by the time the police and firemen arrived, the main Chamber of Deputies was in flames. Inside the building, the police quickly found a shirtless Marinus van der Lubbe. Van der Lubbe was a Dutch Jewish insurrectionist communist and unemployed bricklayer who had recently arrived in Germany, ostensibly to carry out his political activities. The fire was used as evidence that the communists were beginning a plot against the German government. Van der Lubbe and 4000 Communist leaders were arrested. Then-chancellor Adolf Hitler urged President Hindenburg to pass an emergency decree in order to counter the “ruthless confrontation of the KPD”. See Hans Mommsen, “The Reichstag Fire and Its Political Consequences” in Hajo Holborn, Republic to Reich The Making of the Nazi Revolution. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972: pp. 129–222.
58 An-Nahar, Beirut, 3 August, 1949.
59 Ibid.
60 An-Nahar, Beirut, 12 August, 1949.
61 An-Nahar, Beirut, 31 August, 1949.
62 Ibid.
63 An-Nahar, Beirut, 31 August, 1949.
64 Ibid.
65 See Ahmad Asfahani (ed.), Antun Sa’adeh wa al-Hizb al-Suri al-Qawmi al-Ijtimae’ fi Awarq al-Amir Farid Chehab, al-Mudir al-Ome lil al-Amn al-Ome al-Lubnani (Antun Sa’adeh and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in the Private Papers of Emir Farid Chehab, the General Director of the Lebanese General Security). Beirut: Dar Kutub, 2006: 68–70.
66 Hassan Hallaq, Al-Tayyarrat al-Siyyassiyah fi Lubnan: 1943–1952 (Political Currents in Lebanon: 1943–1952). Beirut: Maahad al-Inma’ al-Arabi, 1981: 180.
67 See Kirsten E. Schulze, Israel’s Covert Diplomacy in Lebanon. London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1998: 32–34.
68 Abdullah Sa’adeh, Awraq Qawmiyyah (Nationalist Memoirs). Beirut: n.p., 1987: 44–45.
69 See An-Nahar, Beirut, 1–2 September, 1949.
70 Ibid.
71 An-Nahar, Beirut, 14 August, 1949.
72 The New York Times, 18 July, 1949. A number of barracks had to be turned into prisons to hold the extra number.
73 The Times, 18 July, 1949.
74 The most important suspect on the loose was George Abdul Massih, who was able to elude the authorities despi
te the strict security measures and efforts of the regime to have him extradited from Syria first then Turkey where he was thought to be hiding. See An-Nahar, Beirut, 11 August, 1949.
75 An-Nahar, Beirut, 11 August, 1949.
76 An-Nahar, Beirut, 18 August, 1949.
77 The newspaper in question was Al-Alam al-Arabi (The Arab World). An-Nahar, Beirut, 29 August, 1949.
78 Ibid.
79 An-Nahar, Beirut, 20 August, 1949.
80 The Syrian government issued a formal statement on 22 September, 1949, denying official Lebanese claims that Sa’adeh’s wife had been evicted from Syria at the behest of the Lebanese government. See An-Nahar, Beirut, 22 September, 1949.
81 Thurman Arnold, “Due process in trials,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 300, July 1955: 123.
82 J. Dickson Phillips, Jr., “The Appellate Review Function: Scope of Review,” Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 47, no. 2, Spring 1984: 2–3. The clemency authority should permit an applicant, his supporters, the state authorities, and the public at large to comment upon a clemency petition. Because of the breadth of factors involved in a clemency application, participants could urge granting or denying clemency for any reason. To protect the accuracy of the process, any person should also be permitted to comment upon other submissions to the clemency authority, and all comments should be public, so that factual errors or distortions might be challenged.
83 Roscoe Pound, Appellate Procedure in Civil Cases. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1941: 3.
84 Benjamin B. Ferencz, “Nurnberg Trial Procedure and the Rights of the Accused,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 39, No. 2 (July–Aug, 1948): 151.
85 “Brasillach’s file was put together in the days following his trial by de Gaulle’s immediate staff, with official documents from the Court of Justice of the Seine, the Ministry of Justice, the Bureau of Criminal Affairs, and from Brasillach’s defense lawyer, along with whatever unofficial letters were received by de Gaulle from the public at large. The file is thick, surprisingly thick, given that there were only eighteen days between Brasillach’s trial and his execution.” Alice Kaplan, The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000: 202.
86 See M. Walzer, Regicide and Revolution: Speeches at the Trial of Louis XVI. [London, New York]: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
87 See Nathan Olson, Cynthia Martin and Brent Schoonover, Nathan Hale: Revolutionary Spy. Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press, 2006.
88 See C. V. Wedgwood, A Coffin for King Charles: The Trial and Execution of Charles I. New York: Macmillan, 1964.
89 See Evan Carton, Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America. New York: Free Press, 2006.
90 He was charged and convicted for impiety (that of not acknowledging the same gods that the state believed in) and for corrupting minors. See Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and Controversie. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
91 See James T. Brady, J. L. Boyle, John Beall, and Orville Hickman Browning, Letters and Manuscripts Relating to the Case of Captain John Beall. n.p., 1865.
92 See Richard Marius, Thomas More: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1984.
93 Betty Burnett, The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: A Primary Source Account. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2004.
94 Sidney B. Fay, “The Execution of the Duc d’Enghien II,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Oct., 1898): 32.
95 An-Nahar, Beirut, 9 June, 1949.
5 REACTION
It is a widely held view in law that, although administrative action may be imperative to a government where there is insufficient evidence that a political opponent has acted unlawfully, it is far better for the reputation of the government to leave the decision to the judiciary.1 For the public is far more likely to accept the decision of the court if the trial is conducted in accordance with due process than if it is perceived to be a fraudulent instrument for achieving the political objectives of those possessed of power. Kirchheimer describes how neutrality and fairness, when observed, can work to the advantage of the government as follows:
Judicial proceedings serve to authenticate and thus to limit political action. Power holders may have an infinite number of security interests. Some of them, though perhaps far-fetched, are arrived at rationally; others are the product of imagination. By agreeing to a yardstick, however nebulous or refined, to cut down the number of occasions for the elimination of actual or potential foes, those in power stand to gain as much as their subjects. Authentication removes the fear of reprisals or liquidation from multitudes of possible victims, and encourages a friendly and understanding disposition towards the security needs of the power holders on the part of their subjects.2
Likewise, Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School, in describing the need for justice and openness in criminal proceedings, has well noted that “The courthouse is a ‘theatre of justice,’ wherein a vital social drama is staged; if its doors are locked, the public can only wonder whether the solemn ritual of communal condemnation has been properly performed.”3 This legal percept is not merely a policing device to constrain government action. It rests on substantive grounds as well – the principle of equal respect for persons, a basic norm of morality as well as of legality.4
The trial and subsequent execution of Antun Sa’adeh affords an example of how the naked elimination of a political opponent can backfire on those in power. By depriving Sa’adeh of procedural rights, the government all but destroyed the value of the authentication process and what little that was left of its reputation and legitimacy. Its image was dealt a few telling blows from the press, its critics, the public, and even some of its own supporters. Moreover, by throwing all the weight of its power against a single person, the government stirred up public sympathy for the accused and turned him into a martyr pitted unfairly against a large, powerful institution. This is evident from the reactions that Sa’adeh’s trial and execution evoked, both inside and outside Lebanon. If, however, it is necessary to recognize the logic of these reactions across time, as well as to situate them in their proper political and legal context, then it is equally important to understand how the government counter-reacted and whether it was successful in silencing its critics.
The Reaction in Syria
The Syrian people were deeply disturbed by the trial and the verdict. However, strict censorship of the press and fear of government reprisal meant that few dared to comment on the case. It was left to Archbishop Ignatius Hraikah of the Archdiocese of Hama to provide a sophistical response that took cognizance of not only the actual consequences of the act, but also the probable or logical consequences. Writing under the pseudonym “an important figure in Hama” to avoid official retribution, the Archbishop scolded the Lebanese government for the execution of Sa’adeh and rendered its action as a measure of real backwardness:
I was once talking to Mr. Yusuf As-Sawdah, Lebanon’s Minister to Brazil. He noted that Lebanon was the most superior of all Arab states and, to prove his point, cited a study by an American claiming that more than fifty percent of the people in Lebanon speak foreign languages, something not to be found in any other country in the world . . . I have no idea what Mr. As-Sawdah will have to say now about the ‘progress’ of Lebanon after he reads about the trial of . . . Antun Sa’adeh.5
Speaking foreign languages is not necessarily a sign of progress. The benchmark for that is human dignity and how society treats its gifted individuals and utilizes their talents and abilities: “Any conscientious person in Syria or Lebanon who has read what the press has published about the trial of Antun Sa’adeh and the speed with which he was executed . . . will not be able to hold back his tears not just out of grief for this outstanding hero, but also out of sorrow over a nation whose rulers are so careless about human lives.”6 Sa’adeh was the real hero because he did not hesitate to put his life at risk
to fight against the political prejudices and corruption of the state. His execution was a clear aberration from the path of truth and justice.
To prove the point, the Archbishop drew comparisons with the Suleiman al-Murshid episode in Syria.7 A man of origin humble, al-Murshid became the rallying point for thousands of Syrian Alawites during the 1930s and 1940s, acquiring within a short span of time “a fortune as well as a considerable political following.”8 He amassed that fortune by sending his followers to make the uneducated villagers (especially elderly women) sign away their properties to him under the guise of special taxes for him as holder of the virtual sword of Ali Ibn Abu Talib.9 With that wealth and power al-Murshid succeeded in keeping Damascus’ authority out of Alawi territories until 1946, when he was captured and executed on charges of subversion. With simple comparative analysis, Archbishop Hraikah used the al-Murshid episode to make an eloquent, vicious invective against the prosecutors of Sa’adeh:
Antun Sa’adah . . . was a man of a patriotic mission and national call, whose political opinions and ideas of unification continued, for fifteen years, to occupy popular minds in Lebanon and Syria, at home and abroad. He was a man whose ideology was embraced by hundreds and thousands of intellectual Arab youth . . . [Yet, in his trial] the attorney Mr. Lahhoud, was not even given twenty four hours to examine the file and prepare his defense. Conversely, the trial of Suleiman al-Murshid, the thug, instigator and rebel against the country who conspired against it, lasted for several months, during which all information and evidence were registered and attorneys defended him in closed and public sessions for days and days.10
The article ended with an accelerated attack on the Lebanese regime for “offering Sa’adeh’s head on a silver platter to the mobs of Al-Kataib . . . just as Herod offered the head of John the Baptist to his daughter Herodias.”11 Al-Qubas was banned for fifteen days for publishing the article!12
Naturally, after Zaim’s downfall and execution in August 1949, the mood in Syria changed. A stream of condemnatory writings, mostly memoirs, appeared in the Syrian press expressing local disgust at Sa’adeh’s betrayal and killing. The most sensational piece, which probably did more than any other single act to arouse interest and passions, was Qubbani’s reflections in al-Dunia newsmagazine in 1949. The opening paragraph would suffice: