Chinese Mandarin - Several boys die copying Saddam hanging

WORLD / Saddam Trial

Several boys die copying Saddam hanging

(AP)
Updated: 2007-01-15 09:49

A Palestinian vendor displays necklaces showing former Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein in his shop in the West Bank town of Jenin, Thursday, Jan.
11, 2007. [AP]

Cairo, Egypt - The boys' deaths, scattered in the United States, in
Yemen, in Turkey and elsewhere in seemingly isolated horror, had one
thing in common: They hanged themselves after watching televised images
of Saddam Hussein's execution.

Officials and relatives say the children appeared to be mimicking the
former dictator's Dec. 30 hanging, shown both on a sanitized Iraqi
government tape and explicit clandestine videos that popped up on Web
sites and some TV channels.

The leaked videos, apparently taken by cell phone cameras, set off
international outrage over the raucous scene at Saddam's execution, but
some experts are more concerned about the images of the deposed Iraqi
leader dropping through the gallows floor and his body swinging at the
end of a rope.

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The experts say such graphic images can severely affect youngsters who do
not yet understand the consequences of death and violence, especially
because Saddam's death received intense international attention.

"They see how it's done, but they don't think it's horrific, and they're
more likely to imitate it," said Hisham Ramy, an associate professor of
psychiatry at Ain Shams University in Cairo.

A day after Saddam's execution, a 10-year-old boy in Texas hanged himself
from a bunk bed after watching a news report on the execution. Police in
the Houston suburb of Webster said the boy, Sergio Pelico, tied a
slipknot around his neck while on the bed but had not mean to kill
himself.

"I don't think he thought it was real," Julio Gustavo, Sergio's uncle,
said afterward. "They showed them putting the noose around his neck and
everything. Why show that on TV?"

Something similar occurred in Turkey, where 12-year-old Alisen Akti
hanged himself Wednesday from a bunk bed after watching TV footage. His
father, Esat Akti, told a newspaper in the southeastern province of Mus
that his son had been affected by the televised images.

"After watching Saddam's execution he was constantly asking 'How was
Saddam killed?' and 'Did he suffer?'" Akti was quoted as saying. "These
television images are responsible for my son's death."

Nine-year-old Mubassahr Ali, from the eastern Pakistan town of Rahim Yar
Khan, died hours after Saddam when he also mimicked the ousted leader's
execution, local police official Sultan Ahmed Chaudhry said.

"The ill-fated boy used a long piece of cloth, tied it with a ceiling fan
and wrapped its other end around his neck. Then he stood on a chair and
fell down," Chaudhry said.

In Yemen, at least two young boys died and another was injured in
apparent imitations of Saddam's hanging.

One of the cases involved a 13-year-old junior high school student who
hanged himself after watching Saddam's execution on television, a Yemeni
security official said.

When the boy's family returned to their home outside the capital, San'a,
on Wednesday, they found him hanging from a tree wearing a traditional
Arab headdress, said the boy's cousin, Yahya al-Hammadi.

In Saudi Arabia, a 12-year-old boy was found by his brother hanging from
an iron door with a rope around his neck, the newspaper Okaz reported.
The boy, Sultan Abdullah al-Shemmeri, lived with his family in the
province of Hafr al-Baten, near the Iraqi border.

"The child was just 12 years old and didn't really know whether the
execution of Saddam was something good or bad," a Saudi Interior Ministry
official said Saturday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Local media in Algeria and India also have reported other mimicking
deaths, but these could not immediately be confirmed.

Ramy, the professor in Egypt, said children are prone to imitating
violence they encounter on television, the Internet and movies, but
usually they act out against another person. Mimicking a hanging or
suicide is unusual, but perhaps in this case it is unsurprising, he said.

Because "some people have said Saddam is a hero and martyr and have
glorified his death, this has affected children," Ramy said.

But Jasem Hajia, a child psychologist in Kuwait City, cautioned against
placing all the blame on video images. "This is extreme, and I think
there were physiological disorders as well with the children," Hajia said.

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