The Secrets of Iraq's Death Row

The saving grace for defendants like Zayneb is that Iraq's judicial system operates at a crawl. It's a "lethargic process," says Basam Ridha, an adviser who has been tasked by al-Maliki to hasten the punishment. Some cases, says Ridha, have taken a year or more just to be heard by the investigative judge, who decides if the case needs to go to trial or not. Other prisoners short-circuit the process and find ways to get out of prison, either by paying their jailers or, in some instances, bribing the judge to dismiss their case.

Saddam, though, is almost out of time. If his sentence is upheld by the appeals court, Iraqi and U.S. officials say the plan is for him to be hanged from the same gallows used for common criminals. That could change for security reasons, says a U.S. lawyer working closely with the court, but even a technical snafu probably won't be enough to save him now. Remember the man who slipped the noose, believing Allah had saved him? His reprieve didn't last long. "We hanged him," says an Iraqi official who watched as prison guards took down his body and wheeled it into the adjacent refrigerated morgue. "We followed the law."