Bevan Hurley
1 June 2021
The state of Arizona is stockpiling lethal gasses ahead of its planned resumption of executions – including the Zyklon B gas used by Nazis to kill nearly one million Jewish people at Auschwitz.
Arizona’s Department of Corrections has spent more than $2,000 on the ingredients for hydrogen cyanide, a deadly gas favored by the Nazis during the Holocaust, according to documents obtained by The Guardian.
According to The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 1.1 million people died at the concentration camp during World War II, including 960,000 Jews.
Arizona suspended executions in 2014 after it botched the execution of Joseph Wood, who took nearly two hours to die because of an error with his dose of lethal injection.
The last person to be executed in Arizona by gas was German national Walter LaGrand in 1999.
LaGrand died an ‘agonizing choking and gagging’ death which lasted 18 minutes from the moment the gas entered the chamber, according to an eyewitness account published in the Tucson Citizen.
In recent years, the state has aggressively sought new methods to execute its 115 death row inmates, including the use of experimental drugs.
Newly released documents show it has been purchasing the ingredients to create the deadly cocktail of drugs necessary to carry out execution by gas poisoning.
As well as the purchase of Zyklon B ingredients, it also bought a solid brick of potassium cyanide in December for $1,530, according to The Guardian.
The state of Arizona is preparing to resume executions at its Florence prison (pictured) – seven years after it botched the death of Joseph Wood
It has also spent $1.5 million on a batch of pentobarbital, which would be used to sedate inmates during the execution.
The state of Arizona is preparing to resume executions at its Florence prison (pictured) – seven years after it botched the death of Joseph Wood
Arizona prepares to execute death row inmates with Zyklon B
In 1999, correctional officer Jim Robideau gave media a guided tour of the gas chamber used for for executions, colloquially called the ‘Death House’, at Florence Prison. The state is purchasing deadly drugs as it plans to resume executions – including the notorious Nazi gas Zyklon B
This photo shows San Quentin Prison’s death row gas chamber before it was dismantled in 2019
In June 1944, Hungarian Jews arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau, in German-occupied Poland. More than 1 million Jews died at the camp, many poisoned in has chambers by Zyklon B
Arizona has also been conducting tests on its mothballed gas chamber at the state prison in Florence.
The ‘astonishingly primitive’ series of tests has included holding a candle flame up to sealed windows and doors to check if the chamber was airtight.
The chamber was built in 1949 and has been out of use for 22 years, since LaGrand’s execution.
Joseph Wood, 55, who shot his estranged girlfriend and her father in 1989. His 2014 execution by lethal injection was condemned as ‘torture’ by the late Senator John McCain
Prison staff took part in role play exercises, acting as inmates resisting being taken to their death, The Guardian reported.
Guards screamed phrases like: ‘This is murder’, ‘I’m innocent’, ‘You’re putting me down like an animal’, and ‘This is against everything America stands for’.
In 1999, Walter LaGrand, a German national, was executed for a bungled 1982 armed bank robbery in which a man was killed.
Patty Machelor, a writer with the Tucson Citizen, described LaGrand’s death in macabre detail in her report published March 4, 1999.
‘The execution proceeded as cyanide pellets were dropped into the acid below the chair,’ she wrote.
‘The witness room fell silent as a mist of gas rose, much like steam in a shower, and Walter LaGrand became enveloped in a cloud of cyanide vapor.
‘He began coughing violently – three or four loud hacks – and then, in what appeared to be his last moments of consciousness, he made a gagging sound before falling forward at about 9:15 p.m.’
German citizen Karl LaGrand, right, was executed by gas poisoning in 1999, the last person to die by that method in Arizona. His brother and accomplice Walter, left, chose to die by lethal injection after the pair carried out a bungled 1982 armed bank robbery in which a man was killed
Pellets similar to the ones seen in this photo are used in a gas chamber execution. A witness to a 1999 Walter LaGrand execution said cyanide pellets were dropped into the acid below the chair
The execution chamber at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence where condemned prisoners are held down before a lethal injection is administered
The execution chamber at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence where condemned prisoners are held down before a lethal injection is administered
The Arizona Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com requests for comment.
Of the 115 inmates currently on death row in the state, Arizona has chosen two it would like to
Arizona has already selected two inmates as likely candidates to go first out of a current death row population of 115 people.
Frank Atwood, 65, was sentenced to death in 1984 for the murder of an eight-year-old girl, Vicki Lynne Hoskinson, in 1984.
And Clarence Dixon, 65, convicted of the 1978 murder of a college student, Deana Bowdoin.
Former Arizona Senator John McCain, who was himself tortured for years while held captive in a Vietnamese prison, spoke out against the state’s executions after Joseph Wood’s agonizing death in 2014.
Convicted murderer Wood – who gunned down his former girlfriend and her father in 1989 – was put to death at the state prison in Florence after losing a last-minute appeal.
‘I believe in the death penalty for certain crimes. But that is not an acceptable way of carrying it out. And people who were responsible should be held responsible,’ McCain said after Wood’s agonizing 2014 death.
‘The lethal injection needs to be an indeed lethal injection and not the bollocks-upped situation that just prevailed. That’s torture.’
The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) director of communications Judy Keane said inmates on death row would be able to choose their method of execution.
‘The (ADCRR) is prepared to perform its legal obligation and commence the execution process as part of the legally imposed sentence, regardless of method selected,’ Keane said in a statement.
‘ADCRR stands ready, with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, to carry out court orders and deliver justice to the victims’ families.’
According to Arizona law, a defendant who is sentenced to death for an offense committed before November 23, 1992 can choose either lethal injection or lethal gas at least twenty days before the execution date.
If the defendant fails to choose either lethal injection or lethal gas, the penalty of death shall be by lethal injection.
What is Zyklon B? The cyanide-based pesticide used by Nazis in WWII that Arizona is now stockpiling to resume executions
Zyklon B, the trade name for a cyanide-based pesticide, became the primary drug used by Nazis as its preferred killing tool at Auschwitz and Majdanek in 1942.
Banned after World War I, the Nazis began using the drug at Auschwitz in order to accelerate its genocidal plans to kill Jews.
The gas works by interfering with the respiratory system.
Upon arriving at a death camp such as Auschwitz, prisoners, were examined by a Nazi doctor.
Anyone who didn’t look capable of punishing physical labor, including babies, disabled, pregnant women and elderly people, did not pass the first selection.
They would be told they were being taken to showers to rid themselves of lice, and ordered to turn over their valuables and undress.
Once inside one of the gas chambers, guards would throw pellets of Zyklon B, like the ones above, into the chamber.
All those inside would be dead within minutes.
Approximately 1.1 million people were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and other death camps. A total of 6 million Jewish people were murdered during the Holocaust.
In 1946, one of the chemists responsible for selling Zyklon B to the Nazis for use on humans, Bruno Tesch, was executed.
Hydrogen cyanide continues to be produced under different names, including Delta-Degesch.
Cans of lethal Zyklon B used by the Nazis to execute more than 1 million Jewish people during the Holocaust are displayed at a museum at the site of the former Majdanek concentration camp
http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue2/1999/03/04/147996-lagrand-18-minutes-to-die/
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