A group of Algerian schoolchildren hanged a 12-year-old classmate in a game imitating the execution of Saddam Hussein, a newspaper reported on Monday, in the latest of a series of copycat hangings.
The Algerian boy died two days after the former Iraqi dictator 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.
”United States 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 ”traumatised by images of the hanging”, a member of her family said.
The 35-year-old, identified by her initials AC, had been ”depressed and hadn’t eaten” since watching repeated television footage of the execution, the relative said, asking not to be named. Badly injured in the fall, she died in hospital.
The two-and-half minute film of Saddam’s execution, shot on a cellphone 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 nine year-old boy hanged himself from a ceiling fan on January 1, also trying to copy hanging scenes from the execution 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. — Sapa-AFP