These days, my social network pages are more of an echo chamber than a variety of different opinions. Many years ago, I switched off comments on this blog because of the levels of abuse my work was attracting. It didn’t affect me personally, but some of it would not have been particularly pleasant for everyone to read. As the years have gone by on social networks, I’ve snoozed, unfollowed and blocked countless people who have, in my opinion, crossed the line from honest debate to vile abuse. Some were borderline so I made what was an unconscious decision that if I was in doubt I’d kick them out. However, that’s not to say I completely avoid comments and threads with which I profoundly disagree.
The minimum 55 year sentence handed down to Hashem Abedi, who plotted with his brother to murder innocent people at the Manchester Arena, appeared on a number of networks and understandably the hang ’em and flog ’em brigade were out in force. Of their number, pretty well all of them wanted Abedi to be executed by the state, but only after he had had the shit kicked out of him by fellow criminals and murderers in prison. I don’t agree with state execution, or capital punishment as we call it, but by the same token I do understand the wish for revenge, an eye for an eye and all that. But for me, I don’t think sending him off the gallows is any kind of punishment at all.
Salman Abedi, who blew himself to pieces in committing mass murder at the Arianda Grande show in 2017, would have been fully expecting himself to end up in paradise, accompanied by countless virgins for company. The reality, as most of us fully understand, is that the paradise he dreamed of does not exist. And even if it did, he’d be little more than worm food after his obscene act. His suicide murder meant that in killing 22 innocent people, and injuring many more, he did not have to face justice. The relatives and friends of the dead would gain no comfort from his demise. They would suffer for the rest of their lives. Salman Abedi’s worthless existence ended that day.
Obviously, I was not personally affected by what happened in Manchester. No one who died was a relative of mine, so despite my anger and abhorrence, I suppose I am able to look at what happened in a dispassionate kind of way. I look at the Abedi brothers as little more than evil islamist fascists. Whether theirs was a perverse interpretation of their religion matters little. They still committed obscene murders on the basis of their religion. If they cannot end up in hell, because like paradise it doesn’t exist, then let at least one of them end up in prison.
Imagine facing the prospect of 55 years behind bars. Hashem Abedi will be 78 years of age before he has the slightest prospect of freedom and even that depends totally on whether he ends up a reformed character. I want him to serve every day of that 55 years. I want him to spend most of his time in a tiny cell, deprived of almost all freedoms, worrying at all times who is standing behind him, denied the kind of life most 23 year olds are probably going to enjoy. It will be awful for him. Every day, he will have to confront the truth of what he did and the freedoms he threw away. He will be reminded, day in and day out, of those whose lives he took and the many more lives he ruined. Capital punishment might make us feel better but it would also spare Abedi the prospect of 55 years of being locked up. Do you not see? I want him to suffer the consequences of his evil acts for the rest of his life. And while he suffers, he will gradually be forgotten. No martyr. One day just an elderly man with nothing to show for his life.
No. Don’t hang Hashem Abedi. Lock him up and put the key away somewhere safe for the next 55 years. Given his poisonous philosophy, he’d probably love to go to the gallows in his own eyes a martyr. Instead, let him rot between those four walls. That would be the best punishment of all.
