Months after the execution, Iraq invaded Kuwait, sparking the first Gulf War.
There was international condemnation of the execution, but no surprise as Saddam Hussein's regime was becoming well known for its brutality.įollowing the 6.30am hanging the British ambassador to Iraq was ordered to leave and all ministerial visits cancelled. He told a British envoy shortly before his death that he was "simply a reporter after a scoop".
DRACONIAN IN A SENTENCE TRIAL
He was arrested at Baghdad airport, waiting for a flight back to London, and after six weeks in the Abu Ghraib prison, he was put in front of TV cameras and confessed to being an Israeli agent.įollowing a on-day trial behind closed doors, Farzad was convicted and hanged on 15 March 1990, aged 31. A British nurse, Daphne Parish, who drove him to the site, was jailed for 15 years.įarzad, who came to live in Britain from Iran when he was 16, had been invited by the Iraqi government to join a journalists’ trip to examine reconstruction work after the war with Iran after writing a number of articles on the Middle East for The Observer.īut But on the day he flew out, there were reports of an explosion at the Al-Iskandrai plant, said to be at the centre of Iraq's development of medium-range missiles, and The Observer commissioned him to write a report.
DRACONIAN IN A SENTENCE FREE
There is no more to be said, but he will be free forever.” FARZAD BAZOFT (1990)įarzad's execution in Iraq caused uproar around the worldīritish journalist Farzad was arrested in September 1989 after trying to discover the truth about a large explosion at a weapons complex 30 miles south of Baghdad.Ī court in the Iraqi capital imposed the death sentence after convicting him of spying for Israel. Shortly before the execution, Chambers' mother said in a written statement: “No one has the right to take someone else's life. Without warning, the lever to the trap door was pulled, he said. Speaking outside the prison, Karpal said the condemned men were blindfolded, their legs were bound and a noose was slipped around each man's neck in the presence of three witnesses - a doctor, a magistrate and the prison superintendent. The two men were led handcuffed up the few short steps to the wooden gallows of Pudu Prison just before 6am, Barlow’s lawyer Karpal Singh said. The pair were arrested on the resort island of Penang in November 1983, with 180 grammes of heroin and given mandatory death sentences.īarlow, 28, who had dual British-Australian nationality, worked as a welder in Perth and 29-year-old Chambers was a building contractor in Sydney.ĭespite appeals for clemency from the Australian and British Prime Ministers and Amnesty International, and a plea for a stay of execution, that was still pending in Penang High Court, the two were hanged in July 1986. Barlow, from Stoke-on-Trent, and Australian Brian Chambers, were the first Westerners to hang under Malaysia’s tough anti-drugs laws, which prescribe death for anyone convicted of having over 15 grammes of heroin.
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