Samar Saed Abdullah

Tricked into the death penalty

by 4WardEver UK – Jan 2010
compiled from various sources
Any news updates on this case will be listed at the foot of this item

Samar Saed Abdullah was sentenced to death in August 2005. She insists she is innocent of the murder of her uncle, his wife and one of their children. She has blamed her fiancé, saying he killed her relatives in order to rob her uncle. Her fiancé was also accused of the murder, but it is not known if the authorities have been able to arrest him.

Of the crime she stands accused of she says; “I think about it every day, every hour. I wake up with it in my head,” she said. “It’s the reason I am here.”

In court and in an interview in prison with a CNN reporter, Ms. ‘Abdullah said she only confessed to the murders because she was tortured by the police.

“They kept beating me, and they told me, ‘Say whatever we want you to say, and do not say anything else, and say yes, I was an accomplice to this crime.’ Although I had nothing to do with it. Finally, they made me sign a blank piece of paper, and they filled it out afterwards.”

After the fall of Saddam Hussain in 2003 Iraq was controlled by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which suspended the death penalty.

The interim Iraqi government which took over the following year reinstated the death penalty for a number of offences, and justified it by saying that the death penalty was necessary to deal with the precarious security situation.

The first executions were carried out in September 2005. Last year at least 65 people were executed, including two women and former president Saddam Hussain.

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