Abstract
In 1881, Henrik Ibsen wrote Gengangere (in English Ghosts), a play with a polysemous title: on the one hand, it refers to “ghosts” and, on the other, it designates those “events that repeat themselves.” The work begins with Helen Alving’s wish to dedicate an orphanage to the memory of her late husband, Captain Alving, who does not physically appear in the play, although seems to be omnipresent. He is a ghost because, even though he is dead, he continues to manifest himself in the reality of the other characters. This type of character is known as unseen character, a figure that is constantly alluded to without ever appearing and that has a decisive influence on the action of the plot.
This reference acquires significance when put in relation to the theoretical work of La muerte del verdugo. Reflexiones interdisciplinarias sobre el cadáver de los criminales de masa (The Death of the Perpetrator: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Dead Body of Mass Criminals) edited by Sévane Garibian. Its objects of study are the necrographies of perpetrators of mass crimes who have been decisive for the recent political-symbolic trajectories of their nations and whose presence is still palpable. What the book tries to capture is the process of spectralization of some of the tyrants and genocidaires who have determined world history of the 20th and 21st centuries. Their death did not represent a break in their presence, but rather an event that inscribed them definitively in history. While death anonymizes and condemns the victims to oblivion, the executioners are allowed to enter the myth. It does not only not erase their traces, but it sometimes resignifies them: the specter of the perpetrator always returns after death, thus challenging the rules of presence and absence. Thus, the starting point of the study is located in the material—the body; it crosses the mutable—the corpse—and it goes towards the symbolic—the legacy. However, this process is not unidirectional, but rather based on a movement of swaying. Indeed, for the spectrum to exist, it must return to the body, but to a more abstract body than before. This corporeality is not only materialized in the monuments and physical spaces that house the perpetrators, but also in intangible entities such as legal, political, and memorial structures. This way, the eschatological and messianic pretensions of many of these characters is realized once they have died.
The death of these figures and the subsequent process generate a series of questions about the time and manner of death, the treatment of the remains, and the development of the legacy of the perpetrator and his crimes, which are the three main themes that structure the study: modalities of death, post-mortem treatment of the body, and patrimonialization. These three thematic blocks are connected to a fourth major issue: the construction of the national and memorial narrative. These bodies that still speak after their death are at the epicenter of popular, ideological, religious, or magical beliefs of a nation. Although each figure should be conceived as unique, the analysis of their deaths allows a dialogue to emerge among all of them even though they are discussed from different academic perspectives—law, history, anthropology, sociology, or literature. The interdisciplinary approach of this study draws a kaleidoscopic map of perpetration.
Méndez’s preface points out the importance of the study of these tyrants’ deaths in their own contexts and the need to put these cases in relation to the justice of victims in societies of post-dictatorship or armed conflict. The introduction, written by Garibian, “La muerte del verdugo o el tiempo incontable de su eternidad” (The Death of the Perpetrator, or the Uncountable Time of his Eternity), offers the reading keys of the study: the questions that arise with the death of the executioner, the interdisciplinary approach and the three main themes—death, remains, and heritage. Garibian classifies the modalities of death in three categories which organize the book on a structural level: natural death, judicial execution, and extra-judicial execution. The foreword by Tranchez, “Tiranicidio y Derecho Internacional: ¿Es posible su coexistencia?” (Tyrannicide and International Law: Can They Possibly Coexist?), provides an ontogenetic overview of the constitution of states and the international legal order. She places within this framework the question of the tyrant’s death who violates human rights. The problem lies in the impossibility of attacking the tyrant due to a double legal protection: the common right to life and the armor of the function as head of state. Any attack against him is considered terrorism.
The first part of the book, “Muerte natural, muerte bajo sospecha” (Natural Death, Death Under Suspicion), analyzes the natural deaths of different perpetrators and it is subdivided into four chapters. In the first, “El ‘señor de la tierra’. La rendición de cultos al cenotafio de Pol Pot” (The “Master of the Land”: Cult Activities Around Pol Pot’s Tomb), Guillou makes a historical review of Pol Pot’s trajectory, from the moment of the Kampuchea Workers’ Party’s birth until his death. The interest of this case lies in the dishonorable treatment of the perpetrator on an austere pyre, because it was the funeral of a vanquished person. This is shown by the subsequent conversion of Pol Pot’s tomb into a tourist attraction with a threefold purpose: to establish a rebel area in controlled territory, to contribute to the historification of the Khmer Rouge movement and to extract economic benefit.
The second chapter of this part, “Ubús africanos: de la hybris a ‘morir en paz’, ¿la excepcionalidad africana?” (African Ubus: From Hubris to the ‘Easy Death’, the African exceptionality?), written by Ramondy, deals with the African dictators Jean-Bédel Bokassa and Idi Amin, between whom several parallels are drawn. The historiographic oblivion after their death in the West contrasts with the occasional rehabilitation of memory in their respective countries. As far as Bokassa is concerned, there is a bronze statue and a grave in Berengo, Central African Republic, which pay homage to him and the legends about him continue to be reproduced after his death. They represent him as an ambivalent character who attracts and repels, sacred and monstrous at the same time. The case of Amin is different, since his grave is far from his homeland, Uganda, and there is no image of it. This figure appears much less mythical than Bokassa’s and is usually caricatured. Neither of them was executed, their bodies were not violated and their remains were never patrimonialized.
In the article “El inextricable camino entre el lecho de muerte y la lucha contra la impunidad: los casos de Franco y Pinochet” (The Inextricable Path from a Deathbed to the Fight Against Impunity: The Cases of Franco and Pinochet) Fernández analyzes the figures of the Spanish and Chilean dictators, among whom there is a mortuary connection: both died naturally and without previous criminal conviction. The differences between them lie in their corpses. The treatment received by Franco’s corpse is a metaphor for the institutional continuity of the regime that he founded. He was even able to choose his tomb: Valle de los Caídos, an architectural complex with religious significance built to perpetuate the memory of the nationals who fell in the Civil War—and to humiliate the losers. The symbolic value of Franco’s tomb was not counteracted by the resolutions of the Law of Historical Memory. The remains of Pinochet rest in the form of ashes in a chapel on his family estate in Los Boldos. The treatment of his body was conditioned by the initiatives put in place to fight against the impunity of this perpetrator.
Hartmann’s chapter, “La revancha póstuma de Slobodan Milosevic” (Slobodan Milosevic’s Posthumous Revenge) focuses on the figure of the Serbian dictator. Milosevic died before the sentence of his trial was carried out and therefore his responsibility was suspended and he did not receive any punishment. His coffin was exposed and his funeral became a political rally in his defense. Finally, the dictator was buried in the garden of his wife’s family property, where still today admirers gather annually to honor him. His death not only spared him from punishment, but also freed him from his status as executioner.
The second part is called “Ejecución Judicial” (Judicial Execution) and begins with Patin’s contribution, “¿Expiación del asesinato de millones de personas? La ejecución de altos mandatarios nazis tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial” (Atoning for the Murder of Millions? The Execution of High-Ranking Nazis after the Second World War). This chapter presents the analysis of a group of high-ranking officials immediately below Hitler. Patin cites Kantorowicz’s (1957) treatise The King’s Two Bodies as a paradigm that has dealt with the question of the sovereign body. The author bridges the gap between these reflections and the judicial processes that led to the death of the SS leaders in charge of administering the occupied territories. They were hanged and their executions were publicized. In the case of the Nuremberg trials, however, the executions were private and photographs were taken of the bodies. The purpose of these practices was to record the death of the perpetrators and to provide a sense of establishment of a new order. As for the remains, they were burned in order to avoid offering a tomb for the pilgrimage.
The second case of judicial execution dealt with is that of Saddam Hussein, exposed by Arzoumanian in “Saddam Hussein: de la política de la crueldad a una dramaturgia del entierro” (Saddam Hussein: From the Politics of Cruelty to the Burial Dramaturgy). Arzoumanian recapitulates the historical events from the 1958 coup, which ended the reign of the Iraqi monarchy, to Hussein’s death by hanging on December 30, 2006. That day was Eid al-Adha, the day of the sacrifice of the lamb. However, the rope did not put Hussein in the place of the lamb but in the place of the son of Abraham. The execution thus made him sacred. The body was taken to Tikrit, where his grave is located in a building belonging to his family. There, a niche covered by an Iraqi flag and flowers, along with a bed where Hussein supposedly slept, make up a museum and pilgrimage space. Hussein was not buried, but rather exhibited in his grave. This way, the unearthed man denies his absence by his presence.
The third and final part, “Ejecución Extrajudicial” (Extra-judicial Execution), deals with deaths caused by an external, extra-judicial agent. Garibian’s contribution, “Ordenado por el cadáver de mi madre. Talaat Pashá o el asesinato vengador de un condenado a muerte” (“Commanded by my Mother’s Corpse”: Talaat Pasha, or the Revenge Assassination of a Condemned Man), analyzes the case of the Turkish genocidaire, killed by the Armenian Tehlirian in Berlin in 1921. Tehlirian, who had escaped the Armenian genocide in 1915, was found not guilty by a German court after the murder of an executioner sentenced to death by his own country. In this way, the Berlin court gave the floor to an avenger who killed to make himself heard. Pasha was buried in Berlin in a coffin covered with the Turkish flag and with his former minister’s fez. His ashes were transferred to Istanbul and deposited in a mausoleum built in memory of the “Hero of the Fatherland”.
In the chapter “Las metamorfosis del cuerpo de Mussolini” (The Metamorphoses of Mussolini’s Body), Musiedlak analyzes the case of the Italian dictator. Because of the absence of a coherent account, his death and the public exhibition of his body reactivated a series of myths and allowed the political resurrection of the Duce instead of closing the history of fascism. Mussolini’s body was hung and exhibited in 1945 in Piazzale Loreto along with the bodies of Clara Petacci, her brother and 15 other fascists as a form of revenge. The show was filmed and photographed and the body of the dictator was manipulated. He was buried in Predappio’s family crypt and, even today, his memory is still honored.
Magret’s study, “Bin Laden, crónica jurídica de una muerte anunciada” (Bin Laden: Tale of a Death Foretold), explores the death of Bin Laden, which was surrounded by mystery. His execution was contrary to the spectacle offered in the attacks of September 11, 2001, since it happened at night, without witnesses and his body was made to disappear into the ocean. This execution is considered to be extra-judicial because the fight against terrorism does not take the paths of law. In this particular case, Bin Laden did not appeal at any time to any state and therefore implicitly rejected the state monopoly of legitimate violence, and ended up becoming an absolute enemy and not a mere adversary. His death, therefore, represented a re-appropriation of a life and death taken away by the United States, reestablishing an aggrieved legal sovereignty.
Muriel Montagut points out in his article “La muerte de Muamar el Gadafi: contexto, tratamiento mediático y significación” (The death of Muammar Gaddafi: context, media treatment and significance) that on October 2011, an American drone and a French Mirage hit the convoy of Muammar Gaddafi, who was captured by members of the Katiba Tiger of Misrata. Gaddafi suffered a head injury caused by a grenade and was then sodomized with a bayonet. Collective resentments found their time to be expressed through violence: Gaddafi’s body was not only beaten, it was also humiliated. Soon after, images of the execution were broadcast. This media coverage contrasts with the silence of the political leaders regarding the conditions of the dictator’s death. That same night, Gaddafi’s body and that of his son Mustassim were exposed to the public at the residence of a businessman in northern Misrata, to be placed the next day in the city’s morgue. Finally, his body was buried in an unknown location in the Libyan Desert.
After this brief tour through the different sections of the book, the academic value of this study becomes palpable, not only because of the plurality of approaches with which the different cases are analyzed, but also because of the void generated by the scarcity of works that have dealt with the topics studied here. This volume makes it clear that the bodies of the executioners, if they already speak for themselves in life, continue to do so for a long time after death. The problem lies precisely in interpreting these words and making them intelligible. And that is something that this work achieves.