This blog is dedicated for the trial of the century which means everything for Iraqis after 35 years of brutality and tyranny. We will collect opinions, photos, articles and discussion. This blog is not for Iraqis only but for the whole humanity to share.
This is shortsighted comment by Saddam Hussein's French lawyer, ignored the fact the his fellow citizen Charles de Gaulle was named head of the Previsionary Government after WWII by the coallation forces. Is he saying that there was no ligitimacy in that government also?
Here is another example on the way Arabic media plays it dirty game in the new Iraq. Claiming that Iraqis are divided on the issue of Saddam prosecution. We agree with Al-Jazeera that there is a split among Iraqis regarding Saddam .... but we don't agree that it is a 50-50 split ... it is not even 1-99 split. It is a split of the old regime's servants and all other Iraqis.
A funny comment made by an uknown exciled Iraqi figure who spitted that "that Saddam’s execution may do more harm than good for Iraqis." !!!! and it "will leave a deep scar in the body of Iraqi national unity" then "If he is executed, they will hold their Shia countrymen responsible for wiping out a national symbol"
What about Kurds .... aren't they Iraqis? will they be blamed?
What about Sunnis executed during Saddam's era .... will they be blamed?
What about reconcliation?
Al-Jazeera won't give any respect to the Iraqi victims if they were wipe out by Saddamies
Have a look at this link http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BDE07C95-F791-49C3-A087-4569B9C68697.htm
July 11, 2004
Who v. Saddam?
By PETER LANDESMAN
In Dec. 14 of last year, just hours after being hauled out of a hole in the ground by American forces, Saddam Hussein received his first visitors as a prisoner of war: two Americans, L. Paul Bremer III, at the time the top United States administrator in Iraq, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the commander of the American-led forces in Iraq; and four prominent Iraqis -- Mowaffak al-Rubaie, then a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and now Iraq's national security adviser; Adnan Pachachi, the foreign minister of Iraq before Hussein's reign; Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite representative; and Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress. As the men entered the small holding cell, Hussein was sitting cross-legged on the edge of a cot in a white gown and navy blue jacket, his eyes cast down. The visitors were solemn and confrontational. They did not greet him as Mr. President or former president or as anything at all. They stood around him in silence. Then the Iraqis sat in front of him, while Bremer and Sanchez remained standing. Occasionally Hussein lifted his eyes and looked around.
One by one the visitors began asking him to explain some of the heinous acts committed by his regime -- not whether he'd given the orders that turned Iraq into one of the world's worst atrocity zones, but why had he done so. ''I asked him the names of people I knew he'd had executed,'' al-Rubaie recalled recently. ''Saddam was disgustingly sarcastic. He was waving his hands. I asked him, 'Why did you commit these mass graves?' He said, 'Where are these mass graves?' I asked him: 'Have you seen any other ruler in history who has used gas against his own people, like you did in Halabja?' He said the Iranians did it. 'Why did you do Anfal, where a hundred thousand people died?' He turned his face away.''
After about 30 minutes, Hussein's visitors stood to go. It was at this point, according to the accounts of two people in the room, that Hussein's mood shifted: he seemed less defiant, maybe a little afraid. He looked up and said: ''Is that it? Finished? Nothing else?''
Al-Rubaie told me, ''He expected to be tortured, to be hanged, or he expected Sanchez to pull out his pistol and empty three or four bullets in his head.'' That was Hussein's idea of justice. And that's how it would have gone down if he had still been running things.
At the time, summary execution wasn't an option. Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (C.P.A.), had suspended court-ordered executions in Iraq to head off a wave of revenge killings of deposed Baathists, and also because Britain, Washington's most important coalition partner, outlawed capital punishment in 1965. But now, with Hussein in their legal custody, there seems to be little doubt that Iraq's new government will reverse the order and that eventually Hussein will be executed -- shot if he is tried as a military officer, hanged if tried as a civilian. First, however, he is to stand trial in what is likely to be one of the most riveting, complex and potentially controversial legal proceedings ever carried out on the world stage. Four days before Hussein's capture, Iraq's Governing Council announced the creation of the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Panels of five judges, along with up to 20 investigative judges and 20 prosecutors -- all of them Iraqis -- would try Iraqi nationals and residents for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide committed between July 17, 1968, when Hussein's Baath Party consolidated power, and May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.
On June 30, along with 11 of his top deputies, Hussein was officially placed in the legal custody of the interim Iraqi government, though American troops retain physical control of him. (A few days before the handover, the Americans and Iraqis signed a memorandum of understanding that keeps Hussein in American hands.) The following day, the American forces transported him to a makeshift courtroom on the grounds of the United States military headquarters, Camp Victory, near the Baghdad airport, where he was presented with seven preliminary charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Seated across from an Iraqi judge and asked to identify himself, Hussein answered, ''I am Saddam Hussein al-Majid, the president of the republic of Iraq.'' He then interrogated the judge, pressing him to identify himself, to say where he obtained his law degree if he even was an authentic judge, and what laws he was using. According to Al Jazeera's translation, the judge replied, ''I have worked since the former regime, and I have been nominated by coalition authorities.'' Hussein then mocked the judge and said, ''This means you are applying the invaders' laws to try me.''
President Bush has repeatedly emphasized that Hussein's ultimate fate was for the Iraqis alone to determine. ''They were the people that were brutalized by this man,'' he said soon after Hussein's capture. ''He murdered them. He gassed them. He tortured them. He had rape rooms. And they need to be very much involved in the process.''
But while the Bush administration has encouraged Iraqi involvement and is doing all it can to create the sense that the Iraqis are now in control of their own country, it is still intent on taking an active behind-the-scenes role in Hussein's prosecution. Washington has devoted years to preparing the case against him. And in invading Iraq, the United States has suffered the loss of hundreds of American soldiers and a great deal of political capital to topple Hussein and bring him to justice. With the failure, to date, to find weapons of mass destruction, and the ties between Iraq's Baathists and Al Qaeda apparently not what the administration led Americans to believe they were, the architects of the invasion are looking to the trials of Hussein and his lieutenants to vindicate the war and fulfill their vision of the taking of Baghdad as a transformative event in the region's history.
''It goes without saying Saddam's trial is going to be one of the most important trials of the last hundred years, including Eichmann,'' Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, told me in mid-June. ''This will finally convince Iraqis that his regime has really been brought to an end.'' Even more important, Wolfowitz said, will be the mere fact of the trial. ''I'm struck at how often Arabs I talk to who believe in what we're doing -- democratic reform in the Middle East -- say that the cardinal criterion isn't elections or freedom but equal justice under the law.''
Much of what Wolfowitz and other proponents of the war anticipated has not turned out as planned, however, and there are American and Iraqi officials who admit that their carefully orchestrated arrangements for Hussein's trial might never come to pass. Lacking the security for even a public handover of power, when might it be possible to hold a public trial for Hussein? Might Hussein's claim of an ''invader's laws'' find more believers in the Arab world than the equal justice under the law that Wolfowitz speaks of? And is an American-style, due-process trial really what the Iraqis want anyway?
''Iraqis have their own goals for this tribunal, not that it brings justice but that it punishes people,'' said Salem Chalabi, the Iraqi exile, nephew of Ahmad Chalabi and general director of the Iraqi Special Tribunal since April. ''I'm treading a thin line between what Iraqis want, which is a quick process to judge Saddam guilty and just kill him, and what the international community desires, which is due process, a fair trial. All this will end up being thrown aside if you let Iraqis take over. They may just want to go ahead and create a new kind of process and just kill everybody, which is a realistic alternative.'' He added, ''A lot can go wrong.''
alem Chalabi says that Hussein probably will not have his day in court before the fall of 2005, after the evidence against the former president has been gathered and he has watched the trials of other senior Baathists. Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali for his reported role in chemical weapons attacks against the Kurds, will most likely stand trial first, according to a senior State Department official who has been closely involved with the tribunal. This is because the case against him is the most developed, the official said: investigators maintain they have documentary evidence of his direct orders to attack the Kurds. Neil Kritz, the director of the rule-of-law program at the United States Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan institution created by Congress, and an adviser to the Iraqi Special Tribunal, said: ''It's also crucial to develop other cases first, to put together and demonstrate the systematic nature of the atrocities. You have to build the paper trail against Saddam.''
In fact, while Iraqi judges and prosecutors will actually conduct his trial, the paper trail has been built largely in the United States. This began in 1991, when the Defense Department dispatched scores of investigators for the Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) to Kuwait and southern Iraq to collect witness testimony and physical evidence of Iraqi war crimes during the invasion of Kuwait and the gulf war that followed. Around the same time, watchdog organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International began their own investigations into Hussein's 1987-88 Anfal campaign, in which Human Rights Watch estimates more than 100,000 Kurds were killed (including some 5,000 gassed in Halabja), the brutal suppression of Shiite insurgencies in southern Iraq in 1991 and the battlefield gassing of Iranian soldiers between 1983 and 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war.
In 1997, in the wake of atrocities in the Balkans and the genocide in Rwanda, President Clinton appointed David J. Scheffer to be the first United States ambassador at large for war crimes issues. Scheffer spent the remainder of the decade lobbying the United Nations Security Council to charge Hussein with war crimes. The indictment would have had mostly symbolic value; Scheffer expected no move to seize Hussein. Still, despite the preponderance of evidence, the Security Council refused to act. Scheffer maintains that certain governments with seats on the council -- China, Russia, France -- seemed more interested in protecting their oil interests in Iraq than in calling attention to crimes against humanity. The Pentagon also hedged, claiming concern about exposing American pilots policing the no-flight zones in northern and southern Iraq to retribution.
The Bush administration continued to collect evidence against Hussein, but for a different purpose: trying him once he was toppled. ''We wanted to be ready with a database, records outlining abuses,'' Pierre-Richard Prosper, Scheffer's successor and the current ambassador for war crimes issues, told me. ''When the environment was right, Saddam could be tried and held accountable for his actions.'' A onetime assistant United States attorney in Los Angeles and an original prosecutor at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Prosper has a suite of offices down the hall from Secretary of State Colin Powell. On Sept. 10, 2001, Prosper was given two JAG officers to dispatch to Europe to meet with Kurdish exiles who'd witnessed Iraqi atrocities. ''It had nothing to do with the invasion,'' he said. ''We just knew one day he wouldn't be in power.''
Once the plan to invade Iraq arose, the Bush administration wanted to be prepared to try Hussein by United States military tribunal. ''We actually expected that Saddam was going to order mass chemical weapons attacks against our people, and that if thousands ended up being killed, we might then have reason to try him for war crimes,'' a senior White House official told me. ''If he'd committed crimes like those against us, we would need to be prepared for a Nuremberg-type trial.''
The United States wasn't the only country that wanted to bring Hussein to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity. There was also Kuwait, which Iraq had invaded and pillaged; Iran, whose troops Iraq had gassed; and Israel, which took repeated hits from Iraqi Scuds during the gulf war.
By mid-April 2003, it seemed clear that if Iraq had chemical and biological weapons it wasn't going to use them. That month, Prosper announced at a Senate hearing that the administration intended neither a United States nor a United Nations trial; it would let the Iraqis bring Hussein to justice themselves.
In January of this year, Prosper flew to Baghdad with 22 boxes of witness statements. Twenty American investigators followed in April and May; another 50 are to be sent in the next few months. In early March, the Justice Department appointed the first Regime Crimes Liaison -- Gregory W. Kehoe, a trial lawyer from Tampa, Fla., who had been a prosecutor for the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague -- to assist with the collection of evidence and the prosecution strategy. The way the administration puts it, American participation in the Iraqi Special Tribunal is designed to be pyramidal: greatest at the base, the investigatory stage -- the collection of witness testimony and documents, the exhumations of massacre sites -- at which the Iraqis have little or no experience. Kehoe's teams plan to disperse throughout the country and bring the evidence back to the special tribunal's headquarters in Baghdad.
Kehoe's investigators are preparing a ''command responsibility'' case against Hussein, under which he, as the former leader of the government, can be held accountable for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during his tenure, even if he never personally killed, gassed or massacred. ''These cases aren't as legally difficult as they are factually difficult,'' Kehoe told me in June. ''We need documents and witness testimony to see who was responsible at a particular time. That can be laborious.''
The evidence that is found will then be handed up the special-tribunal pyramid. ''Higher up, into the court process, it becomes more and more Iraqi,'' Prosper explained to me. ''So by the time you're actually in the courtroom, at the tip of the pyramid, it's an Iraqi-led process.''
Since the special tribunal's inception, Salem Chalabi has been the Iraqi at the tip of the pyramid. Chalabi, 41, got the post through no small influence of his uncle Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, who was once a favorite of the United States but has fallen from grace with reports (which Chalabi denies) that he passed American secrets to Iran. Until he arrived in Iraqi Kurdistan in January 2003, Salem Chalabi was a $500,000-a-year corporate lawyer at Clifford Chance in London. An exile with no expertise at criminal law and someone intimately aligned with the two most politically charged entities in Iraq (his uncle and the United States), Chalabi today might not be seen as the obvious choice to spearhead a hugely complex experiment in criminal justice that above all else had to be perceived as Iraqi-led and politically neutral.
The fact is, however, that Chalabi has in a sense been working on the case since 1993. That year, Kanan Makiya, a prominent Iraqi dissident, asked Chalabi, then a 30-year-old Northwestern law student, to draft an Iraqi National Congress report petitioning the Security Council to investigate Iraqi war crimes. Chalabi spent the next 10 years moonlighting as an anti-Baathist agitator. Financed by the Pentagon, the State Department and the Justice Department, he gave seminars on Western law to hundreds of exiled Iraqi lawyers and judges. In 2002, he worked on a report for the State Department's Transitional Justice Working Group that later became a blueprint for the special-tribunal statute and Iraq's interim constitution.
To the special tribunal's critics, Chalabi is an American proxy rubber-stamped by the governing council. Chalabi told me by phone from Baghdad three weeks ago that Washington had ''nothing whatsoever'' to do with his appointment. ''I was chosen by the Iraqi Governing Council because they knew I was the one pushing this the hardest,'' he said. Still, it was the Iraqi National Congress (I.N.C.), and not the governing council that announced his appointment on April 20.
Salem Chalabi could well end up as Exhibit A for Hussein's defense. Hussein's family, led by one of his two wives -- she is now living in Qatar -- has retained a multinational committee of 20 attorneys to represent him. One of them, a Jordanian named Issam Ghazzawi, says that Hussein's defense team will argue that the Iraqi Special Tribunal is an illegitimate puppet propped up by an illegal invasion. Calling the special tribunal ''Salem Chalabi's court,'' Ghazzawi says, ''There will be no legal court; it's a revenge court, not a court of law.'' One of the lead attorneys, a Jordanian named Mohammed Rashdan, insists that Hussein is being railroaded. ''Saddam is innocent,'' he told me by phone from Amman. ''We are sure these charges are propaganda. We have a defense about genocide and crimes against humanity. We have evidence, but I cannot speak in detail about it.'' Both men believe that no matter what case they present, Hussein will be convicted and eventually executed. Rashdan says, ''The defense we are putting on for Saddam is for history.''
While only diehard Baathists and fantasists would argue that Hussein is innocent, his defense team hasn't been alone in criticizing Chalabi's appointment. ''He's intelligent, capable, competent, but not necessarily a wise choice if the goal is apolitical fair justice,'' says Richard Dicker, the director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch. ''I was enormously troubled that Salem Chalabi's appointment was announced by the I.N.C., a political entity with a political agenda. . . . He damages the credibility of the entire process.''
Chalabi's selection was also opposed by many Iraqis, who see the Iraqi National Congress as Washington's proxy. ''This tribunal is not ours; it is somebody who came from abroad who created a court for themselves,'' Zuhair Almaliky, the chief investigative judge of Iraq's central criminal court, told me recently. ''Chalabi selected the judges according to his political opinions.''
Chalabi's actions haven't always helped the special tribunal's image. Not long after he was appointed in April, he announced that he had selected the first seven investigative judges and four prosecutors for the tribunal but then refused to identify them. He cited security concerns: what better way for insurgents to undermine the court than by killing or scaring off the judges? On the other hand, one of the key attributes of international due process is transparency. Who are the judges? What are their qualifications? How objective are they? If one were predisposed to see Chalabi as an American pawn, faceless judges with unknown pasts and mysterious predilections were fuel for the fire.
''The trial could be an extraordinary opportunity to send a message to the tyrants of the Arab world,'' says M. Cherif Bassiouni, the former chairman of a United Nations commission to investigate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. ''But the deck is being stacked, and it's going to be obvious. . . . Where in the world can you say this is an independent judiciary, with U.S. proxies appointing and controlling judges, with U.S.-gift-wrapped cases?'' He paused, then continued: ''A team of 20 lawyers is going to defend Saddam, including presidents of Arab bar associations. They're not there to defend Saddam as a person as much as oppose a system of victor's vengeance. . . . In the Arab world there is already the perception this is a mockery.''
Chalabi himself is irritated with the criticism. When I spoke with him in June, he sounded exhausted, besieged. He sees himself as someone who has sacrificed greatly to be where he is, trading his sumptuous Western life for a $1,400-a-month salary and mortal peril. ''I've had a relatively privileged life outside Iraq,'' he said. ''I've had very good training. This training has given me a basis to try to do something in Iraq. . . . I wanted this trial to be a way to demonstrate to Iraqi people that even someone as heinous as Saddam Hussein has rights, and respect of these rights is one of the principal tests of due process.''
The quick and secretive appointment of judges is not the only thing Chalabi has done to draw criticism. Last fall, while still hammering out the Iraqi Special Tribunal statute with Prosper and the C.P.A., Chalabi founded a firm in Baghdad called the Iraqi International Law Group. ''The lawyers and professionals of I.I.L.G.,'' its Web site trumpeted, ''have dared to take the lead in bringing private-sector investment and experience to the new Iraq.'' War can be a terrific business, and Chalabi -- whose access to Washington and to Iraq's future leaders was considerable -- seemed determined to get his share. To make matters worse, his partner in I.I.L.G., L. Marc Zell, had been a law partner of Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy and one of Ahmad Chalabi's most ardent patrons. Salem Chalabi says he disbanded I.I.L.G. to focus on finishing the Iraqi Special Tribunal statute. But the I.I.L.G. episode, coupled with Ahmad Chalabi's -- and the Iraqi National Congress's -- fall from favor, may have doomed Salem Chalabi's chances of leading the special tribunal through Hussein's eventual trial. One senior State Department official told me that as soon as the tribunal begins its trials -- if not before -- Chalabi is likely to be ''moved along.''
Even if Chalabi is pushed aside, however, many in the international human rights community won't be satisfied, precisely because the tribunal won't be an international one, but an Iraqi one -- with American backing.
Human rights groups, experts in international law and numerous United Nations and government officials around the world greeted the Bush administration's choice of an Iraqi-led tribunal over an international court with derision. They say the tribunal is less the cornerstone of Iraqi autonomy than an attempt by the administration to prove there is no need for an international system of justice. ''The Bush administration pursued this route out of its antipathy to internationalized forms of justice,'' said Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch, which has been compiling evidence of atrocities in Iraq since the gulf war in anticipation of an international war-crimes tribunal. ''This was going to be evidence that the world didn't need big international courts. 'Look, we've done it on the local level in Baghdad, and it works.'''
Some of the human rights advocates also contend that the administration wants to maintain control of the trials because it is concerned that the trials might turn up evidence of American complicity in some of Hussein's atrocities. The United States, which considered Iran the greater regional threat after the ascent of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, did tacitly support Hussein's regime until the invasion of Kuwait, in part by authorizing the sale to Iraq of pathogens like anthrax and botulinum that were used to manufacture biological weapons. This is one reason the United States was so insistent on keeping Hussein's trial out of an international court, argues Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. ''It's to protect their own dirty laundry,'' he told me. ''The U.S. wants to keep the trial focused on Saddam's crimes and not their acquiescence.''
These critics of the Iraqi Special Tribunal resent too that they and their expertise and investment of time and money in international justice have been pushed to the sidelines. What many of them had hoped for was something like the United Nations' Sierra Leone war crimes court -- a ''hybrid'' proceeding that would be set in Iraq and staffed mostly with international attorneys and judges, along with as many local jurists as possible. Expertise and financing would come via the United Nations, and so, ultimately, would the control.
Iraqis themselves are quite clear about what they want, though, and it's not a United Nations-led tribunal. ''Iraqis don't want to be imposed upon by a huge U.N. tribunal bureaucracy,'' said Sermid Al-Sarraf, an Iraqi exile who took part in the State Department's planning for postwar Iraqi justice. ''The U.N. had 15 years to call for a tribunal. . . . If the international community had done its job, we wouldn't need a tribunal now.''
Zuhair Almaliky, the Iraqi judge, agreed, telling me: ''We are feeling like judges for the first time in 35 years. We have a tradition of 7,000 years of law.'' It is a tradition that Iraqis are eager to exercise.
Are the Iraqis up to the task? Here opinions differ. The view of the Iraqi legal system from the White House, not surprisingly, is quite rosy. Administration officials stress that while Hussein's political rivals were being assailed in secret tribunals, a court system for nonpolitical crime, full of capable judges and lawyers, operated with relatively little intervention from Baathist leaders.
But others, including Salem Chalabi, are less sanguine in their assessment. ''Twenty-eight thousand lawyers in Iraq, and most of them do nothing,'' he lamented with an audible groan. ''Most register companies, and they take three months rather than the two hours it would take in the West.'' There's going to be a steep learning curve, he warned. ''When we first started talking about the Iraqi Special Tribunal, one of the judges produced a two- or three-page statute that was embarrassingly basic. The C.P.A. realized that if the tribunal was left to Iraqis, what would emerge would be something out of whack with the rest of the international community.''
Even Prosper concedes the limitations: ''In Baghdad in January, I asked prospective Iraqi Special Tribunal judges how many people they intended to try. They said 5,000. I thought 50 was going to be tough. When I was a prosecutor in L.A. during the Rodney King riots, overnight we were given thousands of cases. This was obviously a fully operational first-world judicial system with federal, state and local courts. And the entire system was paralyzed.'' Meaning, of course, that the Iraqis have no idea what it takes to try these kinds of cases.
The solution, according to the Bush administration, is to pour in as much American personnel, advice, physical support and money as the Iraqi Special Tribunal needs. To which detractors nod and say, Exactly: that's the problem.
aking a lesson from the protracted trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague -- two years and running, with no end in sight -- Chalabi says that he has tried to set up rules of procedure that will keep Hussein from turning the trial into political theater. ''If it goes on for a couple of years, it will lose its significance and cathartic nature,'' he said. ''And in light of the security situation, a podium for Saddam to speak his mind would play a destabilizing role. We've insured that he'll get a fair trial, but he won't be able to use this as a platform.'' The rules, for instance, will keep Hussein from calling witnesses who aren't directly tied to the charges before the court. But this might not be the case when it comes to the sentencing portion of a trial. Political context and intention may be admissible as mitigating circumstances. If they are, Hussein's attorneys are certain to call American and other foreign officials and businessmen to testify.
Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, anticipates a trial that will be dangerous and socially subversive: ''He's going to turn the trial into a military showdown,'' he told me. ''This is going to inflame the Arab world. We have to start a huge public campaign to educate Iraqis what to expect. Otherwise, he will steal the whole show.''
If the trial ever gets that far. It is implausible to expect that the trials won't reflect the facts on the ground. There is always the possibility, particularly if the political situation in Iraq devolves into chaos or civil war, that Hussein could be broken out of jail -- or simply assassinated before he ever steps into a courtroom. After elections, a new Iraqi government will also have the right simply to scrap the Iraqi Special Tribunal and its statute, in whole or in part. Despite all the rhetoric about Iraq sowing the seeds of the rule of law in the Middle East, a quick end for Hussein has its supporters. But a senior State Department official told me that it would be impossible to railroad Hussein or ''expedite his end'' while he is in American custody. ''If the Iraqis tried that, they'd have bigger problems than Saddam,'' he said.
For now, the architects and supporters of the Iraqi Special Tribunal profess optimism that the trial will proceed as planned, while conceding their uneasiness. ''The ship has left port,'' said Prosper, the war crimes ambassador. ''And there's a lot of nervous people on the pier because everyone wants to be sure it goes well and it's done right.''
Chalabi says that he can understand the concern. ''If we don't follow through, this whole thing can be disastrous,'' he said. ''If we succeed, we are well on our way to having a legal system, a society that will accept the rule of law. People don't trust the rule of law because they haven't understood it forever. Under Hussein, no one believed in any of this.''
Peter Landesman is a contributing writer for the magazine.
By Matt Born and Joshua Rozenberg
(Filed: 07/07/2004)
The West Country solicitor defending Saddam Hussein announced yesterday that he was stepping down amid reports that his partners were upset about the adverse publicity his involvement was generating.
As mainly a divorce specialist, Tim Hughes, 36, seemed an unlikely candidate to be the only British member of the former Iraqi strongman's international defence team.
For one thing, he had no previous experience of a case involving a political prisoner, although last year he did successfully defend a gamekeeper accused of using illegal poisons.
Mr Hughes was recruited to the 20-strong team by Emmanuel Ludot, a French advocate hired by Saddam's family, who he got to know during a year working for a Paris law firm.
But yesterday, barely a week after landing a role in the world's most high-profile criminal trial, Mr Hughes said that he wanted nothing more to do with it.
In a statement, he admitted flying to Jordan last week at the invitation of Mr Ludot for what he thought was a conference about the legal issues surrounding Saddam's detention and trial.
But "when I arrived I found myself plunged into a strategy review with Saddam Hussein's defence committee," he said.
To make matters worse, Mr Hughes was then - apparently unwittingly - cast in the role of the defence's press spokesman.
"Calls were coming in from the world's media," he said. "I was the only natural English speaker there, so they asked me to deal with a call from the BBC and then to be the group's spokesman."
It was this media attention which appears to have so upset his colleagues back at Bevan Ashford in Tiverton, Devon.
The firm specialises in commercial matters rather than criminal ones. And although it boasts that its clients include "many household names", it has evidently decided that a line had to be drawn at the world's most infamous tyrant.
On his return from Jordan, Mr Hughes was summoned to a meeting with his partners at which it was decided that his "involvement was going beyond the original purpose of his visit".
"I shall not be going out there again," he said.
A spokesman for Bevan Ashford yesterday denied that there had been a "showdown" with Mr Hughes. "We are looking at internal procedures to see if there are any lessons to be learnt," he said.
He stressed that neither Mr Hughes nor the firm had ever taken on Saddam Hussein as a client. "The matter is now closed."
Yesterday, Mr Hughes, a father of three, was back on more familiar territory at Exeter magistrates' court representing a woman accused of stealing £30 of picture frames from Cancer Research UK.
AFP - Saddam Hussein's Jordan-based defence team has chosen an Iraqi lawyer to defend the deposed dictator in court, and some of its members plan to travel soon to Baghdad, one of the lawyers told AFP.
"The defence team chose on Sunday an Iraqi lawyer," who will represent Saddam in front of the Iraqi Special Tribunal in accordance with Iraqi law, Jordanian lawyer Issam Ghazzawi told AFP.
Yesterday, the head of the defence team, Mohammed Rashdan, told AFP he received a call from the head of the tribunal, Salem Chalabi, who told him that only an Iraqi lawyer could represent Saddam in court.
Ghazzawi declined to identify the lawyer "for his own security and out of fear of reprisals" but said "he was chosen from among 20 Iraqi lawyers who volunteered."
He also announced that members of the defence team as well a number of "volunteers" will be leaving Amman for Baghdad in three or four days.
"We will hold a meeting Wednesday in Amman of lawyers and volunteers during which those who wish to go to Iraq will register their names," Ghazzawi said.
"On Thursday or Friday the group will travel to Iraq by convoy, in cars and buses, accompanied by a number of British, American and French journalists, as well as others who may wish to go," he added.
He said the presence of journalists "is the most adequate formula" in the absence of an "international protection".
Members of the defence team have accused some Iraqi officials of warning them against going to Iraq and have accused the US-led coalition of rejecting their repeated requests to meet with Saddam.
Last month they called on the United States, the International Committee of the Red Cross and several countries to provide them with international protection.
Rashdan and two other lawyers, Ziad Khassawneh and Hatem Shahin, meanwhile left for Libya to meet with Aisha Gaddafi, a daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who has also joined Saddam's defence team.
"We want to discuss with our committee there the latest developments, to exchange views and prepare reports," Rashdan told AFP before leaving.
"We also expect to meet Doctor Aisha because she is now a member of the committee," he said.
Ghazzawi said Gaddafi became the 21st member of the defence team, which also includes European and American lawyers appointed by Saddam's wife and three daughters.
In addition, around "1,500 volunteers, 400 American professors and 200 consultants from different countries, including France and Latin American nations" back the defence team, Ghazzawi said.
©AAP 2004
THE ARRAIGNMENT
Tables Turned, a Victim Sees Persecutor in Court
By JOHN F. BURNS
AGHDAD, Iraq, July 4 — When Saddam Hussein entered court last week to face charges of crimes against humanity, his first concern, after shedding his chains and settling into the dock, seemed to lie with a small group of people who were there to witness his day of reckoning.
For the first minute or more, something to his right, toward the rear of the room, distracted him, so much so that the judge seemed to have only half his attention. Was it the presence of foreign reporters? Or the two senior officials of the new Iraqi government who were sitting at the front of the cramped stall serving as a visitors' gallery?
Only later, from a burly Iraqi prison guard who clasped Mr. Hussein's right arm on his way in and out of the court, did Dr. Muwaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's new national security adviser, discover that Mr. Hussein was trying to get a fix on him, one of the two officials who sat watching Mr. Hussein from the lower tier of the stall.
"He asked the guard as he left, `The man with the beard, was that Muwaffak al-Rubaie?' " Mr. Rubaie recalled on Sunday. "And the guard told him `Yes,' and he said, `I thought so.' "
Here, at last, was the turning of the tables, the hunter turned hunted, the accuser accused.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis felt the scourge of Mr. Hussein's brutality. A few of them now sit in the seats of power that once belonged to Mr. Hussein and the other 11 now under formal investigation on charges that, in most cases, amount to mass murder.
The prime minister in the new interim government that assumed office after the United States restored Iraq's formal sovereignty last week, Iyad Allawi, is a British-trained neurosurgeon who survived an ax attack in London that British authorities attributed to Mr. Hussein's agents. Adel Abdul Mahdi, the finance minister, has said he was tortured by Mr. Hussein's secret police, as has Hamid al-Bayati, the deputy foreign minister.
Dr. Rubaie, a neurologist now on extended leave from a medical post in London, has said that he was seized from an operating room while still an intern in Baghdad in 1979, taken to a dungeon, tied up, and hung from the ceiling and rotated for hours.
There are others with similar stories in virtually every government department, including some of those now working as lawyers and judges for the Iraqi Special Tribunal, which is to try cases arising from the repression under Mr. Hussein. But only one, Dr. Rubaie, had the satisfaction — his word, after the court hearings for the 12 on Thursday — of being present in the courtroom, barely 10 paces from Mr. Hussein, to see their persecutor brought to account.
"I'm on top of the world, not because I want revenge, but because it's so important that we are applying justice," Dr. Rubaie, 54, said as he left the court on Thursday evening, after the last of the 12 accused had been driven off in chains to an American helicopter on the first leg of their journey back to a secret detention center outside Baghdad.
"By bringing these men into a court, we've begun a huge psychological healing process," Dr. Rubaie said. "This is a new Iraq."
On Sunday, back in his office in the Green Zone, Dr. Rubaie reflected on the experience of sitting, empowered now, across from some of the men who once persecuted him.
After three stints in Mr. Hussein's jails, he fled to England, helped to found an Iraqi exile group, and gained British citizenship. More than 20 years later, he still suffers from back pains and kidney ailments that he traces to being hung, beaten and given electric shocks.
At that time, he says now, he wondered if anyone of real authority in Mr. Hussein's terror machinery knew of his case. Families of many who disappeared into the jails, and from there to mass graves, now speak of a terrifying casualness about the arrests, for the most trivial of perceived slights against Mr. Hussein.
Being recognized by the former dictator in the court, without ever having met him, Dr. Rubaie said, was an indication that he was not one of the army of unknown. He acknowledged, too, that, at moments, he experienced a personal edge to his feelings. One, he said, came when he listened to Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Mr. Hussein's 53-year-old half-brother, who was deputy head of the feared secret police at the time of Dr. Rubaie's arrests in the late 1970's.
"I thought, `Muwaffak al-Rubaie, when you were in your cell, and being tortured, this man was upstairs,' and I thought how unfair it was, in a way, that he should be treated with such respect by the court," he said. "You know, at the time these men seemed like giants, like monsters, but it turns out that they were basically just thugs. I sat there in court thinking, how could it be that men like this reduced a nation with a 5,000-year history of civilization to this? How did we allow it to happen?"
All over Iraq crowds have been transfixed by television replays of Mr. Hussein's exchanges with the judge. While some people have resented seeing him humiliated, Dr. Rubaie said he felt anger toward Mr. Hussein, and frustration with the judge. "Saddam was so unrepentant, he simply wouldn't admit mistakes," he said, leafing through a thick folder of notes he took at the arraignments. "And the judge, in my opinion, was too lenient, allowing Saddam to interrupt, and calling him `Your Excellency' and `Your Honor.' "
As brazen as Mr. Hussein, according to Mr. Rubaie, was Ali Hassan al-Majid, 58, known to Iraqis as "Chemical Ali" for his role in directing a poison-gas attack on Halabja, a town in Iraqi Kurdistan, in March 1988. Dr. Rubaie, reading from full notes, said Mr. Majid's words were chilling.
"After the charges relating to Halabja and the suppression of the Shiite uprising in 1991 were read, he said, `Praise be to God. Is that it? Is that all?' " Dr. Rubaie said. Human rights groups have said that at least 5,000 people were killed at Halabja, and 150,000 others in 1991. "It left me wondering, `What did this man do that we don't know about?' "
Dr. Rubaie related how 11 of the defendants, separated from Mr. Hussein, engaged in discussions while they waited in a conference room to be called, one by one, into court. He quoted an Iraqi guard as saying that the 11, breaking court orders not to talk, addressed each other as if they were still in power. "They called Saddam `The President,' and each other by their old titles — `Mr. Deputy Prime Minister,' `Mr. Minister,' `Dear General,' " Dr. Rubaie said. "It was as if everything in the court was an temporary interruption."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
July 5, 2004
Allawi also said Monday he wouldn't interfere with an Iraqi tribunal's right to decide whether Saddam and his top lieutenants should be executed on war crimes charges.
In an interview with the Arab language television station Al-Arabiya, Allawi said he was willing to abide by whatever the court decided in the trial, which is not expected to begin for months. Iraq assumed legal custody of Saddam from the United States last week and re-instituted the death penalty, which had been suspended by U.S. occupation authorities.
"As for the execution, that is for the court to decide - so long as a decision is reached impartially and fairly," he said.
The former Iraqi Governing Council approved a statute establishing the Iraqi Special Tribunal for Crimes Against Humanity on December 10, 2003. L. Paul Bremer, the former U.S. administrator in Iraq, signed the statute into law on behalf of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The Tribunal is designed to prosecute those accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in Iraq between July 17, 1968, when Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party seized power, and May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over. The court will also have the authority to try several lesser crimes, including the squandering of public funds and attempts to manipulate the judiciary.
The full publication of "THE STATUTE OF THE IRAQI SPECIAL TRIBUNAL" can be found by clicking on the link.
It is a question everyone is asking. Can Iraqis prosecute their former leader? Is he still the legitimate leader? Is Iraq sovereign enough to hold such a trial?
Based on UN Security Council Resolution 1546, Iraq is a sovereign country.
This is an excerpt from the resoultion:
"The Security Council,
Welcoming the beginning of a new phase in Iraq’s transition to a democratically elected government, and looking forward to the end of the occupation and the assumption of full responsibility and authority by a fully sovereign and independent Interim Government of Iraq by 30 June 2004,
Recalling all of its previous relevant resolutions on Iraq,
Reaffirming the independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Iraq,
Reaffirming also the right of the Iraqi people freely to determine their own political future and control their own natural resources,
.
.
.
"
There is an excellent article in Arabic regarding the tribunal at Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper one can refer to.
Saddam Hussien, the former Iraqi President. The charges relate to:
1) The gassing of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988;
2) The violent suppression of the 1991 Shiite uprising;
3) Mass graves of Kurds and Shiites after the 1991 Gulf War;
4) The launching of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war;
5) The 1990 invasion of Kuwait;
6) Massacre of members of the Kurdish Barzani tribe in the 1980s; and
7) Religious Shiite leaders killed between 1980 and 1999. 
Ali Hasan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali" for his role in chemical weapons attacks against the Kurds.
Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti; presidential adviser and Saddam's half brother; allegedly the chief organizer of a clandestine group of companies and funds handling Saddam's money.
Muhammed Hamza al-Zubaydi; retired revolutionary command council member; a leader of the 1991 suppression of the Shiite rebellion.
Sabir Abdul Aziz Al-Douri; governor of Baghdad; head of military intelligence during the 1991 Gulf War.
Here is the beginning, the official start of the trail that everyone was waiting for. Many questions are in everyone's mind. Is this the right path toward the rehabilitation of the nation? or just another side road bomb toward disintegration or chaos? This blog is for all people to participate and give ideas.
The head of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, set up to try Saddam Hussein, has told the BBC that the trial will meet international legal standards.
Speaking on Newsnight, Salam Chalabi said Iraq was "devising procedures" that would comply with other tribunals such as that for the former Yugoslavia.
However, a member of Saddam Hussein's defence team said holding the trial in Iraq was blocking neutrality.
Saddam Hussein was in court on Thursday to hear the charges against him.
Genocide charges
In televised excerpts of the proceedings, released to international broadcasters after the hearing finished, the ousted leader was defiant, declaring himself to still be the president of Iraq.
He defended Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and rejected the court's jurisdiction, branding US President George W Bush as the "real criminal".
He arrived in handcuffs and chains at the court near Baghdad airport to hear charges of war crimes and genocide.
Iraq's new national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, has insisted the process will not be a show trial.
"As an Iraqi interim government, we promise our people and the Arab world and the outside world, we promise that Saddam will stand a fair trial," he said in a BBC interview.
His view was echoed by Mr Chalabi who told the BBC that the trial would follow "very strict due process of law standards that would comply with the rules of the ICTY [the International war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] very closely".
'Bias inevitable'
He rejected international criticism that the proper place for the trial was in an international court.
"The Iraqi people feel this is really part of their issues and they are the primary owners of this process, regardless of what the international community says," he said.
"I feel my role here is to try to merge the two and to try to bring in a fair trial, while at the same time trying to ensure that the Iraqi people feel justified."
PRELIMINARY CHARGES
Anfal campaign against Kurds, late 1980s
Gassing Kurds in Halabja, 1988
Invasion of Kuwait , 1990
Crushing Kurdish and Shia rebellions after 1991 Gulf War
Killing political activists over 30 years
Massacring members of Kurdish Barzani tribe in 1980s
Killing religious leaders, 1974
But Saddam Hussein's lawyers have already challenged the court's legitimacy.
One member of his 20-strong defence team, Dominique Grisay, told the BBC that holding the trial in Iraq would make it impossible for the former Iraqi president to get a fair trial and that the gravity of the charges made it a matter for an international tribunal.
"The people who are being brought to this tribunal are being charged with crimes against humanity - this is typically something which is linked with international law, not with national law," Mr Grisay said.
"The fact that the judges are nationals of Iraq causes a lot of trouble. We believe that there can be absolutely no neutrality if the judge is a national of the country."
Historic moment
The defence lawyers have complained that they are being denied access to their client and it is still not clear whether non-Arabic lawyers will be allowed to participate in the trial.
Iraqis cannot be victims and at the same time juries John Upindi, Namibia
The images of Saddam Hussein - cleared for broadcast by the US military - were the first since his capture in December. The former president looked thin, haggard and with a trimmed, grey beard.
"I am Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq," he replied when asked to confirm his identity at the hearing, which took place inside one of his former palaces, now a sprawling US base.
The BBC's Arab affairs analyst, Magdi Abdelhadi, says this is the first time an Arab ruler has appeared before a judge to face charges related to abuse of power and the brutal oppression of his own people.
He says it is an historic moment not only for Iraq but for the entire region.
Ousted Arab rulers were usually either summarily executed or forced to flee the country, he adds.
Also facing charges in the court were 11 other senior members of Saddam Hussein's former regime.
They included former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and Ali Hasan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his alleged role in poison gas attacks.
PERSPECTIVES ON SADDAM'S TRIAL
July 2, 2004
The high-profile court appearance of the former Iraqi dictator has sparked mixed reactions in Iraq. Three experts analyze the Arab world's reaction to Saddam's trial and Iraq's interim government.
RAY SUAREZ: How did the wider Arab and Muslim world use Saddam Hussein's day in court?
For that, we're joined by Said Arikat, Washington bureau chief for the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Quds; Samer Shehata, a visiting assistant professor of Middle East politics at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University; and Retired . Army Col. W. Patrick Lang, a former Middle East intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Widespread interest
RAY SUAREZ: Well after, Said Arikat, Saddam Hussein was so long out of view, this was the first vision that people have gotten of him since his capture. Did it capture people's imagination and attention?
SAID ARIKAT: Absolutely. I think it also captured a great deal of unsaid anticipation.
RAY SUAREZ: Explain.
SAID ARIKAT: Because, on the one hand, of course, you have Iraqi people who have been brutalized by Saddam over decades, for a very, very long time, and that wanted to see him, they wanted to see justice meted out to him; they wanted to see him face a day in court.
On the other hand, they had a great deal of supporters in Iraq . They feel that this occupation was launched unjustly -- that the invasion was launched unjustly as we have seen in some of the demonstrations and so on.
So there was anxiety and anticipation on both sides of the aisle. In the Arab world it also played differently. That's in Iraq.
But let's say in Jordan or Palestine or Syria or in Egypt , indeed, it played entirely different, where the Iraqi leader or the ex-Iraqi president was perceived to have been put in prison unjustly as a result of an invasion of Iraq.
They feel there is no way on earth that Saddam Hussein will receive a sort of a fair trial in Iraq . They look at the differences. They say that on the one hand we look at Slobodan Milosevic who was accorded all legal tools at his hand to defend himself at The Hague while Saddam Hussein is being tried in Iraq for allegedly the same kind of war crimes. So they see in essence some, double standards, especially in places like Egypt or Jordan.
Mixed reactions
RAY SUAREZ: Professor Shehata, did you see the same mixed reaction even in places where they didn't regard Saddam as a hero in the Arab world?
SAMER SHEHATA: Yes, I did see that. I didn't see anyone really in the major publications, the press or on television, defend Saddam Hussein. But we did see yesterday and today some serious questions and criticisms raised about the whole process, about the legality of the courts, about the U.S. running things as it were, the absence of lawyers with Saddam Hussein there, some talk about this judge and so on.
So there were those kinds of criticisms leveled at the whole process, I think. And I think there was some ambivalence, really. Arabs, you know, had mixed feelings about seeing this man who was the president of Iraq being tried this way by Americans, as it were, in a way. I think many people were really kind of unhappy with that, even though there wasn't so much sympathy to Saddam.
RAY SUAREZ: Tried by Americans? Pat Lang, we heard John Burns call this an uncomfortable hybrid. There is the appearance of the American hand even though the judge was Iraqi, the security guards were Iraqi and so on and so on?
COL. W. PATRICK LANG: I think most Americans really believe that this is a trial run by the Iraqi interim government and that we are playing a very minimum role. But as these gentlemen say, from what I've been told in the last 24 hours, there aren't a whole lot of people in the Arab world who would accept that.
The belief is, in fact, that the interim government is in some way a surrogate for us, and this could not be separated from the former occupation of Iraq.
And what you see here is you see the real problem with this proceeding, and I think it is quite likely that this man will receive a reasonably fair trial, but he is probably very guilty and he is probably going to be convicted and he'll be punished quite severely. And unfortunately it's not going to be believed in the Arab world, that that was a procedure in which he got the kind of defense that we claim that everybody ought to get.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, we've caught a glimpse of how he may handle himself in the dock. What did you make of that?
COL. W. PATRICK LANG: Well, I would have to say -- I've lived in the Arab world for a long time -- and I would say he won the first round there yesterday. In fact he dominated the situation.
In the Arab world, people respect strength. They respect that kind of presence, the kind of grandeur of the gestures of the way he acted with the judge.
They will respect his defiance toward what they see as the dominating western powers. And they will respect the fact that he is unwilling to bow down. They will respect that a lot while at the same time being glad that he is gone and be quite willing to see that he is punished, most of them.
RAY SUAREZ: Professor, do you agree with that?
SAMER SHEHATA: I think that's correct and in fact we did see that comment that Saddam had won the first round, as it were. He was able to defend himself, although I think he was quite polite really and somewhat deferential towards the judge.
He questioned the legality of the proceedings. He refused to sign at the very end as opposed to the others who did sign and said he wanted to wait until his lawyers were there. And, of course, he did defend his actions and that was, of course, unconscionable but nevertheless, he certainly didn't succumb to this proceeding at all.
A chance for leadership?
RAY SUAREZ: Said Arikat, for years it has been said of Saddam Hussein that he aspired to leadership in the Arab world.
SAID ARIKAT: Right.
RAY SUAREZ: Is this – oddly -- a chance for him to speak in that way, using the public portions of this trial to speak to an audience far beyond the borders of his own country?
SAID ARIKAT: Absolutely. I think he wants to speak to the larger audience, and if yesterday was any example, I think we have seen him do that to a certain extent. First of all, he came in with his beard. He was appealing to the broader Muslim world.
Then, he emphasized that "I'm the president of Iraq" talking to the Iraqi people, saying that this is an illegitimate government, I'm still the president. He was saying, where is my lawyer --appealing to the wider and larger international community.
Where is my lawyer, unlike Slobodan Milosevic, or others and so. And finally he was saying that he was reaching out to insurgency saying that you must go on, you must fight on and so on. So Saddam Hussein will take every opportunity to reach out to the Arab world, to show that he is still the defiant one, that he really is the victim of this great power that went and invaded Iraq unjustly based on false evidence.
RAY SUAREZ: Perhaps a little bit less talked about, Pat Lang, but maybe there as well, is the idea that in many places in the region, the vision of a former president sitting surrounded by guards coming into court with shackles on is likely to send an electric charge through a society that only can dream of something like that.
COL. W. PATRICK LANG: Well, I think that's absolutely true. And when you see this man humiliated in this way, and in the Arab world, the idea of personal humiliation has a lot more punch to it than it does in the ordinary run of American society.
To see that and to know that this is the former symbol of one of the nations of the region – or the countries in the region -- will be a very strong thing for an awful lot of people who are running other countries, that's right, and in addition to that, there are a number of people in the media yesterday who to my surprise kept saying this is the first Arab dictator to be put on trial.
Well, I mean, how is that going to be read in various other places? Am I number two, am I number three? This is going to be a profoundly disturbing thing. His defense is going to be that he acted in the interest of the state, that he was fulfilling his duty as the sovereign president of Iraq.
Looking Ahead
RAY SUAREZ: So, over time, Professor, is there a potential that there will be a split view of this proceeding between the rank and file citizen of countries and the leadership cadres in these same countries?
SAMER SHEHATA: Well, we've already seen people in leadership roles in the Arab world -- the Egyptian foreign minister, for example, really deflect the question about the trial. He doesn't really want to talk about that. He wants to talk about Iraq's future and so on, but I do think that most people in the Arab world, even those who have no sympathy whatsoever to Saddam Hussein, are going to be quite critical about this whole process -- about the legality of it being administered or set up -- established by the coalition provisional authority.
The first thing that the interim government did was to overrule Paul Bremer's suspension of the death penalty, as it were. So there are these kinds of, I think, legitimate questions, actually. There are concerns by the lawyers who are going to represent Saddam Hussein about their safety. There have already been threats made in Iraq about -- towards them and apparently the American and Iraqi officials and security forces don't want to provide their security. So these are all very, very serious issues. If there is to be due process and a procedural system of justice in Iraq , this really has to be a little bit better than it has been so far.
RAY SUAREZ: A trial, Said Arakat, that's not only fair but needs to be seen to be fair?
SAID ARIKAT: Well, you see, this is a quandary for the United States and for Iraq . On the one hand they want to show that there is transparency that Iraq has really made sort of a leap forward toward democracy and the judicial process is so elemental to democracy and so on.
But on the other hand, that will also get Saddam a forum, a big forum, a big podium where he reaches out to the Arab world and he could show himself and so on. And the beginning of this trial also shows a great deal of awkwardness. You have a young judge. You have Paul Bremer saying that if the Iraqis got hold of him, they would cut him up to pieces and so on.
We had the same kind of threats made allegedly against the lawyers of Saddam Hussein made by none other than the justice minister Malik Dohan al- Hassan in Iraq and so on, so there is a great deal of confusion that still surrounds this trial. And I think although it's really baby steps toward that process, we can look for a long and tedious and tenuous process as this trial goes on.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, Patrick Lang, if it is long and tedious, does the attention grow or diminish over time in Cairo, in Tunis, in Fez ?
COL. W. PATRICK LANG: I think that if this is televised in the way this was yesterday and he is allowed to speak in this way with the kind of representation that he had, making appeals to Arab dignitaries, this trial will rival in Arab world, the kind of attention that the O.J. Simpson trial got in the United States.
RAY SUAREZ: The Arabic O.J., Professor?
SAMER SHEHATA: Well, people are -- unlike the O.J. trial or the other trial, the Laci Peterson trial, we know what the outcome of this trial is from day one. We know that Saddam is going to be convicted of every single charge against him and that he is going to be executed at the end of the day.
But what's so fascinating and I think what it seems the Americans tried to stop from occurring yesterday was Saddam's defense. What is he going to say; what secrets is he going to reveal, who is he going to implicate while this trial goes on?
He had very good relations with the United States in the 1980s. So that's what is fascinating and mesmerizing about it. But we do know the outcome from day one.
RAY SUAREZ: Guests, thank you all.
by Laurie Kassman
Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein appeared Thursday in an Iraqi court to hear the charges against him, opening a judicial procedure being billed as the "trial of the century."
July 2, 2004 (AXcess News) Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein appeared Thursday in an Iraqi court to hear the charges against him, opening a judicial procedure being billed as the "trial of the century." The trial also marks an important step in Iraqi efforts to regain international legitimacy and achieve some sort of national reconciliation.
Iraq's Prime Minister Iyad Allawi underlines the significance of putting Saddam Hussein and other members of his government on trial.
"We would like to show the world also that the new Iraqi government means business, and wants to do business, and wants to stabilize Iraq and put it on the road towards democracy and peace," said Mr. Allawi.
But even beyond enhancing the democratic credentials of the new Iraq, many see the trial as an essential path toward reconciliation.
"I've always believed the sooner we get Saddam Hussein in the courtroom, the better for Iraq, because there is a sense of cleansing, reconciliation process that will take place during that trial. It is going to be a very traumatic moment for Iraq, but it is a kind of reverse trauma that Iraq needs to go through," said Iraq's representative in Washington, Rend Rahim.
American Law Professor Michael Scharf of Case Western University sees some other potential benefits that reach beyond Iraq's borders.
"The other things that the trial of Saddam Hussein could accomplish are they could create a historic record of his atrocities. So, people in the region who were subjected to propaganda, and didn't really know really what was going on will understand the context in which the United States and its coalition felt forced to invade, and how different the new system with respect to human rights is likely to be from the old system. And, that will help them move on," he said.
Still, legal experts look at the trial of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague and raise concerns that Saddam Hussein could use his trial as a grandstand to fuel civil unrest.
When he appeared in an Iraqi court Thursday to hear the charges against him, he began to show some of his former feistiness. He is heard through an interpreter responding to one of the charges related to his 1990 invasion in Kuwait.
"The seventh charge against Saddam Hussein was against the president of Iraq as the commander in chief of the army. The army went to Kuwait, okay, then it was an official matter. So how come a charge will be levied against someone, an official, who is carrying out his duties? How can you punish that person, while that person, given his title, has guarantees against being sued? These are rights guaranteed by the constitution," he said.
Iraqi judicial authorities insist the former Iraqi leader will have full and proper access to legal counsel to respond to a range of charges related to the Kuwait invasion, his eight-year war with Iran and the 1988 gassing of Iraqi Kurds.
But few expect he will escape justice. Still, human rights monitors like Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch warn the procedure must be above reproach and in accordance with international legal standards to be credible.
"I think it's absolutely essential that there be some way to bring Saddam Hussein and other top officials to justice," he said. "But, if it's not done in a way that comports with international fair trial standards, and if it's not seen to? perceived to be delivering justice, as opposed to vengeance, then it's going to have the opposite effect."
The concerns are not lost on Prime Minister Allawi.
"It will be an open trial. It will be an open court," he said.
Looking to other tribunals around the world that have held former leaders accountable for their actions, analysts stress the importance of a proper and public trial as a necessary part of Iraq's rehabilitation.
Source: Voice of America
BAGHDAD The stakes in the humbling trials against Saddam Hussein and 11 of his top deputies could not be higher: Death is once again the ultimate punishment here.
And death is something that the young investigative judge who sat before Saddam - presiding with remarkable firmness and control, given that he faced a man all Iraq had once feared - worries is the price he may pay for helping bring the law back to Iraq.
The judge spoke with composure about the reality that he himself may become a target: he told another journalist recently that three attempts had been made on his life. To reduce the danger, his name is not being released.
"We need to build our country, of course, and to do that there will be victims," he said in an interview after the court hearing. "If I am going to be among them, I accept it. The most important thing is that we build a country based on justice. There can be no future for us without law."
A few years shy of 40, the judge silenced men much older than he, despite the deference accorded to the elderly in traditional Arab culture. He stood up to men who ruled by crushing dissent with violence, who, according the charges put before them, were responsible for the torture and killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the 35 years that the Baath Party was in power. The tone was set in the first moments after Saddam had his chains removed and he took his seat, perhaps 3 meters, or about 10 feet, from the judge.
"Profession?" the judge asked, according to a translation by CNN. "Former president of the Republic of Iraq?"
Saddam replied: "No, present. Current. It's the will of the people."
.
The judge, his back to the camera, did not allow that to stand. "The head of the Baath Party that is dissolved, defunct," he said. "Former commander and chief of the army. Residence is Iraq. Your mother's name?"
Saddam answered, then asked the judge "to introduce yourself to me."
The judge answered: "Mr. Saddam, I am the investigative judge of the central court of Iraq." He did not tell Saddam that he had been on the bench during his rule, or that he had studied at the Baghdad College of Law and was an investigator in the capital before becoming a judge.
"So you are an Iraqi that - you are representing the occupying forces?" Saddam taunted the judge.
"No," the judge said, "I'm an Iraqi representing Iraq."
The judge also rebuked Saddam firmly when he referred to Kuwaitis as "animals," saying: "Don't use foul language and attack. This is a legal session."
Saddam responded: "Then forgive me."
Later in the day, it became clear that the judge had decided to let Saddam speak longer than the other defendants, whom he cut off far more quickly. He gave Saddam some leeway as they jousted over the validity of the laws governing the proceedings - and the judge reminded Saddam that the sections of law that require the rights of defendants to be read to them had been signed by Saddam himself. Saddam insisted that he was "a man of law," but protested that he was above it. "Is it allowed to call a president elected by the people and charge him according to a law that was enacted under this will and the will of the people?" Saddam asked. "There is some contradiction."
The judge answered: "The president is a profession, is a position, is a deputy of the society. That's true. And originally, inherently, he's a citizen. And every citizen, according to the Constitution, if this person violates a law, has to come before the law. And that law you know more than I do."
In fact, the laws under which Saddam and the others will be tried are a mix of existing Iraqi criminal law, international humanitarian law and laws that predate the ascension of the Baath Party to power in 1968.
In the hearings on Thursday, the men were not charged under specific statutes. The specific charges will be worked out in the next several months, tribunal officials said. Court officials also said that the rules of evidence had not been completed.
In a surprise that became evident during the hearing, the new Iraqi interim government decided to overrule a U.S. ban imposed last year and restore the death penalty. The judge informed each of the defendants that he faced death under Section 406-1-A of Iraqi criminal law. Unlike several of the defendants, who were clearly rattled when the judge told them they faced the possibility of death, Saddam did not visibly react. Salem Chalabi, the head of the tribunal, said that the new government had decided in principle to reinstate the death penalty but that the formal order had not been signed. The decision reverses a suspension of the punishment imposed last year by L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the U.S. official who had run Iraq after the invasion last spring until the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis on Monday.
Under the death penalty statute, civilians face death by hanging. Military officials may face a firing squad. Chalabi would not speculate on how Saddam, who as head of the armed forces often appeared in military uniform, might be executed, saying it would be improper to comment because Saddam had not been tried. "What difference does it make at this point?" he asked.
Saddam's trial is not expected to begin until next year.
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The New York Times BAGHDAD The stakes in the humbling trials against Saddam Hussein and 11 of his top deputies could not be higher: Death is once again the ultimate punishment here.
And death is something that the young investigative judge who sat before Saddam - presiding with remarkable firmness and control, given that he faced a man all Iraq had once feared - worries is the price he may pay for helping bring the law back to Iraq.
The judge spoke with composure about the reality that he himself may become a target: he told another journalist recently that three attempts had been made on his life. To reduce the danger, his name is not being released
"We need to build our country, of course, and to do that there will be victims," he said in an interview after the court hearing. "If I am going to be among them, I accept it. The most important thing is that we build a country based on justice. There can be no future for us without law."
A few years shy of 40, the judge silenced men much older than he, despite the deference accorded to the elderly in traditional Arab culture. He stood up to men who ruled by crushing dissent with violence, who, according the charges put before them, were responsible for the torture and killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the 35 years that the Baath Party was in power. The tone was set in the first moments after Saddam had his chains removed and he took his seat, perhaps 3 meters, or about 10 feet, from the judge.
"Profession?" the judge asked, according to a translation by CNN. "Former president of the Republic of Iraq?"
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Saddam replied: "No, present. Current. It's the will of the people."
The judge, his back to the camera, did not allow that to stand. "The head of the Baath Party that is dissolved, defunct," he said. "Former commander and chief of the army. Residence is Iraq. Your mother's name?"
Saddam answered, then asked the judge "to introduce yourself to me."
The judge answered: "Mr. Saddam, I am the investigative judge of the central court of Iraq." He did not tell Saddam that he had been on the bench during his rule, or that he had studied at the Baghdad College of Law and was an investigator in the capital before becoming a judge.
"So you are an Iraqi that - you are representing the occupying forces?" Saddam taunted the judge.
"No," the judge said, "I'm an Iraqi representing Iraq."
The judge also rebuked Saddam firmly when he referred to Kuwaitis as "animals," saying: "Don't use foul language and attack. This is a legal session."
Saddam responded: "Then forgive me."
Later in the day, it became clear that the judge had decided to let Saddam speak longer than the other defendants, whom he cut off far more quickly. He gave Saddam some leeway as they jousted over the validity of the laws governing the proceedings - and the judge reminded Saddam that the sections of law that require the rights of defendants to be read to them had been signed by Saddam himself. Saddam insisted that he was "a man of law," but protested that he was above it. "Is it allowed to call a president elected by the people and charge him according to a law that was enacted under this will and the will of the people?" Saddam asked. "There is some contradiction."
The judge answered: "The president is a profession, is a position, is a deputy of the society. That's true. And originally, inherently, he's a citizen. And every citizen, according to the Constitution, if this person violates a law, has to come before the law. And that law you know more than I do."
In fact, the laws under which Saddam and the others will be tried are a mix of existing Iraqi criminal law, international humanitarian law and laws that predate the ascension of the Baath Party to power in 1968.
In the hearings on Thursday, the men were not charged under specific statutes. The specific charges will be worked out in the next several months, tribunal officials said. Court officials also said that the rules of evidence had not been completed.
In a surprise that became evident during the hearing, the new Iraqi interim government decided to overrule a U.S. ban imposed last year and restore the death penalty. The judge informed each of the defendants that he faced death under Section 406-1-A of Iraqi criminal law. Unlike several of the defendants, who were clearly rattled when the judge told them they faced the possibility of death, Saddam did not visibly react. Salem Chalabi, the head of the tribunal, said that the new government had decided in principle to reinstate the death penalty but that the formal order had not been signed. The decision reverses a suspension of the punishment imposed last year by L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the U.S. official who had run Iraq after the invasion last spring until the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis on Monday.
Under the death penalty statute, civilians face death by hanging. Military officials may face a firing squad. Chalabi would not speculate on how Saddam, who as head of the armed forces often appeared in military uniform, might be executed, saying it would be improper to comment because Saddam had not been tried. "What difference does it make at this point?" he asked.
Saddam's trial is not expected to begin until next year.
The New York Times BAGHDAD The stakes in the humbling trials against Saddam Hussein and 11 of his top deputies could not be higher: Death is once again the ultimate punishment here.
And death is something that the young investigative judge who sat before Saddam - presiding with remarkable firmness and control, given that he faced a man all Iraq had once feared - worries is the price he may pay for helping bring the law back to Iraq.
The judge spoke with composure about the reality that he himself may become a target: he told another journalist recently that three attempts had been made on his life. To reduce the danger, his name is not being released.
"We need to build our country, of course, and to do that there will be victims," he said in an interview after the court hearing. "If I am going to be among them, I accept it. The most important thing is that we build a country based on justice. There can be no future for us without law."
A few years shy of 40, the judge silenced men much older than he, despite the deference accorded to the elderly in traditional Arab culture. He stood up to men who ruled by crushing dissent with violence, who, according the charges put before them, were responsible for the torture and killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the 35 years that the Baath Party was in power. The tone was set in the first moments after Saddam had his chains removed and he took his seat, perhaps 3 meters, or about 10 feet, from the judge.
"Profession?" the judge asked, according to a translation by CNN. "Former president of the Republic of Iraq?"
Saddam replied: "No, present. Current. It's the will of the people."
The judge, his back to the camera, did not allow that to stand. "The head of the Baath Party that is dissolved, defunct," he said. "Former commander and chief of the army. Residence is Iraq. Your mother's name?"
Saddam answered, then asked the judge "to introduce yourself to me."
The judge answered: "Mr. Saddam, I am the investigative judge of the central court of Iraq." He did not tell Saddam that he had been on the bench during his rule, or that he had studied at the Baghdad College of Law and was an investigator in the capital before becoming a judge.
"So you are an Iraqi that - you are representing the occupying forces?" Saddam taunted the judge.
"No," the judge said, "I'm an Iraqi representing Iraq."
The judge also rebuked Saddam firmly when he referred to Kuwaitis as "animals," saying: "Don't use foul language and attack. This is a legal session."
Saddam responded: "Then forgive me."
Later in the day, it became clear that the judge had decided to let Saddam speak longer than the other defendants, whom he cut off far more quickly. He gave Saddam some leeway as they jousted over the validity of the laws governing the proceedings - and the judge reminded Saddam that the sections of law that require the rights of defendants to be read to them had been signed by Saddam himself. Saddam insisted that he was "a man of law," but protested that he was above it. "Is it allowed to call a president elected by the people and charge him according to a law that was enacted under this will and the will of the people?" Saddam asked. "There is some contradiction."
The judge answered: "The president is a profession, is a position, is a deputy of the society. That's true. And originally, inherently, he's a citizen. And every citizen, according to the Constitution, if this person violates a law, has to come before the law. And that law you know more than I do."
In fact, the laws under which Saddam and the others will be tried are a mix of existing Iraqi criminal law, international humanitarian law and laws that predate the ascension of the Baath Party to power in 1968.
In the hearings on Thursday, the men were not charged under specific statutes. The specific charges will be worked out in the next several months, tribunal officials said. Court officials also said that the rules of evidence had not been completed.
In a surprise that became evident during the hearing, the new Iraqi interim government decided to overrule a U.S. ban imposed last year and restore the death penalty. The judge informed each of the defendants that he faced death under Section 406-1-A of Iraqi criminal law. Unlike several of the defendants, who were clearly rattled when the judge told them they faced the possibility of death, Saddam did not visibly react. Salem Chalabi, the head of the tribunal, said that the new government had decided in principle to reinstate the death penalty but that the formal order had not been signed. The decision reverses a suspension of the punishment imposed last year by L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the U.S. official who had run Iraq after the invasion last spring until the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis on Monday.
Under the death penalty statute, civilians face death by hanging. Military officials may face a firing squad. Chalabi would not speculate on how Saddam, who as head of the armed forces often appeared in military uniform, might be executed, saying it would be improper to comment because Saddam had not been tried. "What difference does it make at this point?" he asked.
Saddam's trial is not expected to begin until next year.
The New York Times
Iraqi Reactions
Expressions of Disbelief, Distress, Delight Over Saddam Hussein?s Court Appearance
ABCNEWS.com
B A G H D A D, Iraq, July 1, 2004? As Iraqis watched the first images of Saddam Hussein appearing in court today to hear the war crimes charges levied against him, life in the capital city seemed to come to a stop.
By Jack Fairweather in Baghdad
(Filed: 01/07/2004)
Saddam Hussein wished onlookers good morning and tried to fire off questions to the judge when he was handed over to Iraqi legal custody yesterday.
During a closed ceremony at an American military base, he appeared to be in a relaxed mood as he and 11 of his former lieutenants were read their rights.
"He said good morning. He wanted to talk about what would happen," said Salem Chalabi, the American-educated lawyer who set up the special tribunal that will try the high-ranking Ba'athists. "We had to ask him to wait."
Saddam was wearing Arab dress and no longer had a beard at the hearing, which lasted for only a couple of minutes. The charges will be read out to him and his lieutenants during a televised court session today.
Some of Saddam's aides were nervous or hostile during the hearing, according to witnesses. Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his use of poison gas against Kurdish villagers, was said to be shaking. "Some of them looked very worried," said Mr Chalabi.
The British Government handed over Ali in defiance of its usual policy of demanding that the death penalty will not be imposed. Members of the interim government have indicated that Saddam, at least, may face capital punishment if found guilty of crimes against humanity.
Downing Street said yesterday that Britain had informed the new Iraqi government of its opposition to imposing the death penalty on Saddam but recognised Iraq's right to decide how its judicial system should operate.
Saddam's trial is expected to start in several months' time and Mr Chalabi fears his biggest challenge will be curbing the former dictator's tongue.
"Saddam is going to want to use the tribunal as a platform for his political views," Mr Chalabi said. "But we're not going to let him. We're going to make him focus on the very specific charges against him."
INDICT Bringing Iraqi war criminals to justice
