Justice is a Pizza Best Served Cold

I love a site that simply reveals the duplicity of those who speak honestly in their native language, which is then whitewashed when they speak in English (or when it is translated for English-speaking media). MEMRI is particularly valuable in this regard.

Thanks to another favorite, I learn of this little gem. You remember Roger Keith Coleman? The TIME Magazine poster boy? You know him, the guy who was actually guilty?

Well, apparently one Roger Willemsen is a darling of the German media, and he was no doubt one of many who hoped with white hot intensity that they could use Poster Boy as a way to bash the United States (the death penalty merely being the convenient excuse de jour). I found the translation of Mr. Willemsen's remarks on Poster Boy to be fascinating on two points:

First, he focuses in on the factoid that Poster Boy's last meal was cold pizza, and fantasizes that one of the corrections officers (a "deeply barbaric ... average man") personally decided to punish a "demonstrably innocent" man by making his pizza "extra cold."

I bet that one will get a LOT of sympathy around here.

The news accounts make mention of his final meal being cold pizza, but that's not good enough for Willemsen. Cold pizza couldn't simply be the result of a the distance between the prison kitchen and Death Row, or a similarly prosaic explanation? Hell, no. That wouldn't give his America bashing enough spice. So, Willemsen kicks it up a notch.

Second, according to Willemsen, Poster Boy was "subjected to every perversion of justice during the trial the likes of which we’d expect from Iran."

That one kind of puzzles me.

Was he sentenced to die for being raped?

Well, no.

Was he executed for being gay?

Well, no.

How about being hanged for "waging war on God" (whatever the hell that means)?

Um, not that one either.

Was he denied a lawyer? Blocked from speaking to the media? Convicted and executed in secret? Tried by legally ignorant jihadi fanatics?

I'm really at a loss here. I can only conclude that Iranian prisoners are routinely fed cold pizza.

posted by Harry Callahan at 09:24 PM

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