Executed man’s ‘head just snapped off’
`A journalist who saw videotape of the Monday hangings of Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and the dictator’s former chief judge has described how one of the men was decapitated.
New York Times reporter John F. Burns told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Monday evening that Barzan Hassan’s head “just snapped off,” because he was apparently given too much rope and fell too far — about eight feet — for a man of his medium build and weight.
The hangman’s calculations — a grim science governing the weight of the condemned and how much rope is necessary to kill quickly — were apparently wrong, Burns said.’
