To the Gallows!

In Mideastern revolutions, the man out in front of the mob may not be leading it --he may be running for his life. Iraq's ruling General Karim Kassem is in the familiar situation; his army, which alone can overawe the mob, is an uncertain weapon. Kassem has already clapped in jail Colonel Abdul Salam Mohammed Aref, his co-conspirator in the four-month-old revolt, as well as a dozen other suspect army officers. Kassem has also tried to placate the mob by alloting free seeds to farmers, and promising land reforms.

Having offered the mob bread, Kassem last week supplied it with a circus: the windup of the farcical trial of Fadhil Jamali, ex-Foreign Minister and, on one occasion. Prime Minister of Iraq in the old regime of Nuri asSaid. Fadhil Jamali, 55, an honest, simple-living pro-Western politician with an American wife and three children, had no chance at all. Of the five members of the military tribunal, only one had any experience in law. The trial sessions were broadcast on radio and TV, and held at night to ensure a packed courtroom, where staged demonstrations against the defendants were permitted.

Jamali was allowed to make a defense speech against a hodgepodge of charges that ranged from "insulting Nasser" to "squandering public money on plots inspired by the imperialists," to "failing to be anti-Jewish" (a marked absurdity to those who remembered his ability in the U.N. to match any other Arab in anti-Israeli invective). With dignity and courage, Jamali said he had favored Arab unity but not under Nasser, nor by Nasser's sleazy methods. Jamali had supported Iraq's membership in the Baghdad Pact because he saw only two possibilities for a modern state, either "strength or alliance with one of the big blocs. We are not strong, and therefore we must join an alliance. I chose the West."

The sentence: death by hanging for Jamali and three others. On hearing the verdict, Jamali seemed almost to lose his balance, then leaned wearily on the railing of the prisoner's box. An assistant prosecutor bawled: "Long live justice! Long live the republic!" Out on the Baghdad streets, the mob howled its joy, clamored for even more death sentences. The mob was clearly closing in on General Kassem, who alone has the power of clemency. The U.S. and Britain felt horror and shock at the verdict (they had expected a prison term), but knew that any public statement by them would only deliver Jamali more surely than ever into the hands of the mob.

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