Declassified account shows Britain would have preferred to see Nazi leaders executed or imprisoned at end of second world war.
“The British government opposed the establishment of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals at the end of the second world war because it wanted selected Nazi leaders to be summarily executed and others to be imprisoned without trial, according to a contemporary account that is declassifiedon Friday.” the Guardian reports.
Winston Churchill made the proposal at the “Big Three” conference at Yalta in February 1945, according to the account, but was overruled by Franklin D Roosevelt, who believed the US public would demand proper trials, and Joseph Stalin, who argued that public trials possessed excellent propaganda value.
Read more in the Guardian
Justice / October 26, 2012
High Court Judge Sarath Ambepitiya sentenced Velupillai Prabakaran,in absentia,to 200 years in prison for the LTTE attack on the Central Bank.
This was more than a ‘life sentence’ which was thought to be the most severe custodial punishment.
But, this was more ‘severe’ in that it was more than two average lifespans.
Our ancient kings sentenced persons to be impaled on sharp pointed iron objects and to be allowed to die slowly.
Another king compelled the wife of a chieftain who offended him,to pound her babies to death,with the pestle,in a mortar, at court.
Two older boys were sentenced to be beheaded – the younger was Madduma Bandara who offered to be beheaded first.
There was also a practice of tying legs of a convict to two bent arecanut tress tied together – and on cutting the tie,the convict was torn asunder.
The west has to learn from us.
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Dr Romesh Senewiratne / October 27, 2012
Dear “Justice”,
It is not unusual for judges to hand down several “life sentences” to be served consecutively. Recently, an Alabama man was sentenced to 624 years for kidnapping, rape and sodomy. In 1994, Darron Bennalford Anderson of Oklahama was sentenced for 2,200 years (yes, two thousand, two hundred years) for rape and kidnapping. The longest sentence for a single count of murder is, from what I have read, ten thousand years (10,000). This was a sentence given to Dudley Wayne Kyzer in 1981 for murdering his ex-wife (also in the USA).
Regarding the cruel punishments by ancient Sri Lankan kings, we might keep in mind the infamous punishment of being “hanged, drawn and quartered”. This was done by the English to Scottish and Irish rebel leaders from the 12th Century and, later, by several other European states. The victim was hanged until they were unconscious, but not dead. Then they were dragged to the place of execution (“drawn”). The final execution was by slow disembowelment, beginning with severing the genitals, followed by removal of the internal organs while the man was still alive. Finally the corpse was “quartered” and beheaded. Often the body parts were placed on stakes in public, to terrify the rebellious population.
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Bedrock Barney / October 27, 2012
We are shocked! Really they were that bad huh?
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Dr Romesh Senewiratne / October 27, 2012
So, Churchill preferred the idea of “bumping off” the imprisoned members of the Nazi leadership without trial, while the Americans and Russians wanted a public trial. Maybe the British leader was worried that the truth would come out regarding his own support for eugenics prior to the Second World War? He was, after all, a strong advocate of eugenics and served as Vice-President of the First Eugenics Conference. And it was eugenics, a British-developed “science”, subsequently exported to the USA and (later) to Germany, that was used by the German authorities to justify the Nazi genocide.
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