The photographs were shockingly graphic, detailing the torture and execution of men suspected of collaborating with pro-Pakistani militias during Bangladesh's 1971 war for independence.
State execution of men who kill will always be an issue, here as in the United States - the more so with cases like the weekend's Derbyshire mass murder to sustain the argument.
Given that China already executes more than 10,000 people each year (that's the estimate of Human Rights Watch; the actual number is a state secret), the execution of men already declared guilty of terrorism and "splittism" in China would seem to be all but automatic.
But on Sunday, Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles F. Burlingame III was the pilot of the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 that was crashed into the Pentagon, said she would approve of an effort by prosecutors to seek the execution of men she blames for killing her brother.
She has been detained in a prison yard, where she witnessed the execution of men and teenage boys, daily.
See articleA human-rights official working for the UN called on the government of Sri Lanka to investigate video footage that seems to depict the summary executions of men captured during the final stages of the civil war with Tamil separatists.
In December, The Times's Declan Walsh reported that militants in Pakistan's tribal belt recorded confessions and executions of men accused of aiding drones attacks in Pakistan, deepening an atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust.
But over the last three years, video clips and photographs shot on mobile phones of the final months of the civil war have surfaced and what they show are executions of men, women and children whose limbs are bound, and the shelling of civilians by the Sri Lankan army.
Opposition figures drew special attention to the bodies in Jdeidet Artouz — sending an alert to reporters with a link to live-streaming video of a mass funeral procession and mass burial — just one day after rebels in Aleppo caused an outcry among rights groups and others over their videotaped public executions of men identified as pro-government militiamen.
The chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Mousawi, is trying to establish that Mr. Hussein and seven co-defendants were responsible for the torture and executions of men and boys from the Shiite village of Dujail, where a small group of guerrillas tried to kill Mr. Hussein in 1982.
