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The Guardian reported last week that the state of Arizona spent $2,000 purchasing the ingredients to make cyanide gas. Arizona is preparing its gas chamber to execute people using the lethal gas, which was originally used by the Nazis at Auschwitz and other extermination camps during the Holocaust.

Arizona’s gas chamber has not been used since 1999, when Walter LaGrand took 18 minutes to die while suffering “agonizing choking and gagging.” Seven years earlier, Don Harding’s slow death via cyanide poisoning was so gruesome that Arizona changed the law to offer lethal injection as an alternative.

The state’s has since been refurbished, after “operability” tests were conducted using water and smoke grenades to simulate the gas and holding a candle up to sealed windows and doors to check for leaks.

The Nazis used Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) to kill more than a million people is gas chambers throughout their extermination camps. Lethal gas has also produced some of the most horribly botched executions in U.S. history. Arizona’s decision to use the same gas deployed by the Nazi’s has been condemned globally.

We would like to thank the Equal Justice Initiative for the content. Click HERE to view the comprehensive article.