Algerian children hang 12-year-old after watching Saddam execution

The Daily Star
Jan. 10, 2007

A group of Algerian schoolchildren hanged a 12-year-old classmate in a game imitating the execution of Saddam Hussein, a newspaper reported Monday, in the latest of a series of copycat hangings. The Algerian boy died two days after the ousted Iraqi leader was hanged on December 30, in the village of Oued Rihou in western Algeria, l'Authentique newspaper reported.

"Oued Rihou is in shock," the newspaper said, without giving details of the hanging.

"US policy in Iraq has made an innocent victim in Algeria," public radio commented.

On January 3, a woman in the western Algerian coast town of Oran committed suicide by hurling herself from a window in her parents' third-floor apartment because she was "traumatized by images of the hanging," a member of her family said.

The 35-year-old, identified by the initials A.C., had been "depressed and hadn't eaten" since watching repeated television footage of the execution, the relative said, asking not to be identified. Badly injured in the fall, she died in hospital.

The film of Saddam's execution, shot on a mobile-phone camera, has spread across the world on the Web, inspiring several children to copy it.

A 10-year-old American boy accidentally killed himself after imitating the video clip he had seen on television, the Houston Chronicle reported last week.

In Pakistan, a 9-year-old boy hanged himself from a ceiling fan on January 1, also trying to copy hanging scenes from the video.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old girl from eastern India also hanged herself from a ceiling fan after becoming extremely depressed watching Saddam's execution on television, her father said.

In the week after the hanging, Algerian newspapers reported that several parents had named their children after the executed Iraqi leader.

A 12-year-old Saudi boy used a chair and metal wire to hang himself from a door frame at his family's home in the city of Hafr al-Baten, near the border with Kuwait, Al-Hayat daily said.

An unidentified security source told the daily the boy had watched footage of the ex-Iraqi leader's hanging.