June 27
SAUDI ARABIA:
Families Can Punish Saudi Militants -Envoy to UK
Families of victims killed by Muslim militants who surrender to Saudi
Arabian authorities could decide if they will be executed, Riyadh's envoy
to London said in an interview to be aired on Sunday.
This week Saudi Arabia gave militants a final chance to surrender under a
one-month amnesty after authorities killed an al Qaeda leader in the
oil-rich kingdom.
"The state will drop its claim on these individuals if they give
themselves in, but the private claims of the families of those who were
killed or who were assaulted or who were wounded will remain for them to
decide and not for the state," Turki al-Faisal said, according to a
transcript released ahead of broadcast.
Asked by interviewer Jonathan Dimbleby on Britain's ITV television if the
families of Westerners killed could demand militants faced the death
penalty, Faisal said: "It is up to them. They will decide."
Al Qaeda has waged a year long campaign of violence in Saudi Arabia,
targeting Westerners, government sites and oil workers and has vowed its
holy war will continue.
The U.S. embassy in Riyadh has advised all 35,000 Americans in the kingdom
to leave and Britain has authorized non-essential staff at the British
embassy in Saudi and their relatives to leave if they wished.
Earlier in June, Saudi gunmen killed an Irish cameraman working for
British broadcaster the BBC and seriously wounded a journalist. Just days
earlier, some 22 civilians, including Westerners, were killed after
militants took dozens hostage.
Security forces killed Saudi al Qaeda leader Abdulaziz al-Murqin along
with three other prominent militants last Friday, hours after militants
beheaded U.S. hostage Paul Johnson.
Faisal denied statements by al Qaeda that Saudi police had colluded with
militants by giving them cars and uniforms to dupe security authorities
and help them kidnap Johnson.
"These people are indiscriminate killers ... they want to show that they
have support from the police and from other organizations, which is
absolutely not true," he said.
(source: Reuters)
CHINA:
China sentences dozens of drug dealers to death
China sentenced dozens of drug dealers to death in June ahead of the
International Day Against Drug Abuse, state media said, despite a chorus
of protests by human rights groups.
In the southwestern city of Chongqing alone, 16 drug traffickers received
death sentences in a public trial on Saturday, the designated
international anti-drug day, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
In Shanghai on Saturday, one man was executed for smuggling 1.8 kg of
heroin into the city from Myanmar, a major drug producer, it said.
"Dozens of drug dealers were sentenced to death in a series of
drug-related criminal cases across China as the International Day Against
Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking draws near," the agency's Xinhuanet Web
site had reported earlier.
Xinhuanet said on Friday that executions had taken place in the
southwestern province of Yunnan, the southern province of Guangdong, the
eastern province of Zhejiang, the northwestern province of Shaanxi and the
western region of Xinjiang.
Photographs splashed on official Web sites showed masked,
machinegun-toting police gripping the arms of convicts in prison garb.
A convicted drug dealer usually receives either a bullet in the back of
the head or a lethal injection.
Rights groups such as Amnesty International, which opposes the death
penalty in all cases, called on Beijing to halt drug-related executions
and review future use of the death penalty.
"We have seen an annual spree of executions in China in the run-up to U.N.
International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in previous
years," it said in a statement.
"Yet no convincing evidence has ever been produced that the death penalty
deters would-be traffickers and users more effectively than any other
punishment," it said.
China executed at least 50 people on drug-related charges last year, but
drug use, related crimes and trafficking are actually rising despite these
tactics, Amnesty said.
China, which borders the Southeast Asian "Golden Triangle" and
Afghanistan, two of the world's biggest opium producers, faces a serious
and growing drug problem. It has more than 1 million registered addicts,
and many more who are not registered.
(source: Reuters)
IRAQ:
Iraqi PM: Saddam may be handed over next weekend
The United States will transfer legal custody of Saddam Hussein to the new
Iraqi government perhaps as early as next weekend, Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi said Sunday.
The ousted Iraqi leader, however, will remain in the hands of U.S. troops,
U.S. officials say.
Iyad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister Allawi said legal documents are
being drafted by both the coalition and his new ministry for Iraq to take
custody of Saddam and other Iraqi prisoners captured during the war.
The transfer of the prisoners should occur shortly after Wednesday's
handover of sovereignty, he said on CNN's "Late Edition."
"Very soon," Allawi said. "I can tell you probably now it will be either
hopefully 2nd or 3rd of July.
"I was just briefed by the minister of justice and legal advisers that all
the documents are being done with the coalition and with the multinational
force and we hope 2, 3, or Fourth of July, Saddam would be in the custody
of the Iraqi people, of the Iraqi government," Allawi said.
In an earlier interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. television,
Allawi had put the timing at "maybe a week or two after handover."
Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.S. and Iraqi officials were working
out details of Saddam's status after the handover, but did not specify a
date.
"I would expect that legal custody would be handed over shortly, but
physical custody would remain in our hands for the foreseeable future,"
Powell said.
U.S. forces won't let go of the former dictator, even after Iraq regains
its sovereignty, because it doesn't have a prison strong enough to hold
him, a U.S. official said last week, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.S. forces will honor transfer-of-custody requests from Iraq's incoming
government, which takes power June 30, as long as they are accompanied by
arrest warrants from an Iraqi court, the official said.
The Iraqi Special Tribunal, established six months ago, is expected to try
Saddam for atrocities committed during his 23 years as president,
including the deaths of some 300,000 people.
U.S. officials have said they plan to continue to hold up to 5,000
prisoners deemed a threat to the coalition even after the restoration of
Iraqi sovereignty. They say as many as 1,400 detainees will either be
released or transferred to Iraqi authorities.
Allawi said the Iraqi government would begin prosecuting Saddam and the
other prisoners as soon as possible, but added it was not yet decided on
who would be dealt with first.
Asked whether Saddam would be executed if found guilty, Allawi told the
BBC that the question was being debated among Iraqi officials. But he made
clear his personal preference.
"If I am voting, I will probably vote that he should get the capital
punishment," he said.
(source: Associated Press)
**********************
Devil's advocate
Jacques Verges has built a reputation on defending people the rest of the
world reviles. Now, in the twilight of his career, the controversial Paris
lawyer not only snags the baddest guy of the bunch but, he confides to
SARAH ELTON, he has a golden opportunity to put U.S. foreign policy on
trial
There is a calm to Jacques Verges, a thoughtful poise completely at odds
with his reputation as France's "l'avocat du diable." And yet at 79, Mr.
Verges is famous as the advocate for such devils as terrorist Carlos the
Jackal, war criminal Klaus Barbie, former Yugoslavian strongman Slobodan
Milosevic, various African dictators and now the man believed to be the
biggest killer of them all.
His next assignment could very well propel the outspoken Paris lawyer into
the geopolitical stratosphere: He has been retained by a nephew and 42
family members to represent ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, as well
as Mr. Hussein's long-time foreign minister Tariq Aziz.
The fate of the former dictator has become a major issue as Iraq prepares
to return to self-government next Wednesday. Two weeks ago, in a bid to
demonstrate a measure of independence, Iraqi authorities presented U.S.
President George W. Bush with a list of demands that included the return
of Mr. Hussein, who has been in U.S. custody in a secret location since
his capture last December.
Mr. Bush angered the Iraqis by refusing to budge, saying there would be no
early handover. "I just want to make sure, when sovereignty is
transferred, that Saddam Hussein stays in jail . . .," he said. "I am
confident, when all is said and done, he will stay in jail. I just want to
be assured."
But Mr. Bush will have much less control over the proceedings once Mr.
Hussein's case finally reaches the courtroom, and Mr. Verges says he plans
to take advantage by putting U.S. foreign policy on trial.
"Trials like Mr. Saddam Hussein's turn the spotlight on the problems of
the world disorder today," he explains. "Who armed Iraq? Who pushed Iraq
into a war with Iran? And who sold these weapons? This is a trial that
will shed light on the world's situation today, a situation that is
dangerous and horrible."
Mr. Verges lives and works in Paris near the bustling Place de Clichy. His
office is a grand room with towering ceilings and walls lined with
bookshelves and objets d'art. His desk sits in front of an enormous
tapestry, surrounded by what he calls the "souvenirs" of his past trials:
an African carving almost as tall as he is, a ceramic Khmer head (Pol Pot
was an old friend) and a crystal serpent from actor Marlon Brando's
daughter, Cheyenne. (Mr. Verges represented her half-brother who was
convicted of murdering her abusive lover.)
Despite the grandeur of his surroundings, he gives a down-to-earth
explanation of how, since being retained this spring by Mr. Hussein's
nephew, Ali Barzane Al-Tikriti, he has found it difficult to prepare a
defence. For one thing, he doesn't know what the accusations will be. It's
assumed the prosecution will focus on such human-rights abuses as the
deadly 1988 chemical attack on the Kurds in Halabja and the Iraqi regime's
brutal repression of the Shia uprising that followed the Gulf War, but
formal charges have yet to be laid.
As well, Mr. Verges may have to co-ordinate his efforts with those of the
Cairo-based Union of Arab Lawyers, which says it has been retained to act
for Mr. Hussein by his wife, Sajida. In response, he insists that he
represents both the ex-president and Mr. Aziz (whose son approached him),
but he suggests he may be willing to collaborate with other lawyers.
Another major impediment is the fact that he has had no chance to meet
with his client; in fact, he doesn't even know where he is. Rumour has it
the former dictator is being held at a U.S. base in Qatar, but Mr. Verges
says he also heard that he's still in Iraq.
Then there is the question of when the trial will take place. There will
be a special tribunal, which at this point has a director and not much
else. Mr. Verges says he worries about the court's credibility, especially
as far as his client is concerned.
"We do not know when the trial will begin. We do not know what he is
accused of. It is a paradoxical situation. Only his enemies are speaking,
like Mr. Bush, who says he is guilty and deserves the death penalty. Mr.
Bush is not humanity's supreme judge. And besides, this is indecent
pressure on any possible tribunal."
Circumstances like these present a serious challenge, but his unusual past
has left Mr. Verges well prepared to face adversity. After his birth, for
example, his father was dismissed as the French consul to Thailand (then
called Siam) because his baby's mother was Vietnamese and intermarriage
was prohibited.
The family moved to Riunion, a French possession in the southern Indian
Ocean, where Mr. Verges's mother died of malaria and his father practised
medicine while raising his 2 sons.
While on the island Mr. Verges nurtured his strong anti-colonial views,
and in 1942 when only 17, he travelled to Liverpool and joined the Free
French Army's artillery brigade. Decades later, this eagerness to fight
the occupation of France would be juxtaposed with his decision to
represent former Nazi officer Klaus Barbie.
Among his many crimes, the "Butcher of Lyon" was responsible for the
torture and murder of Jean Moulin, the highest-ranking member of the
French Resistance to be captured by the Germans.
After the war, Mr. Verges studied history in Paris, acted as secretary of
the International Union of Students in Prague, where he met Mao Zedong,
and then became a lawyer.
At first, he wasn't sure the profession was for him, but after a few
months, he recalls, "I was asked to defend a young thug . . . and I
understood then that this was my vocation because I asked myself this
question: 'This young man who is like me -- is the same age, words in his
mouth have the same meaning as they do in mine, I understand his silences
-- how did he come to do something that I myself would never do and never
wish to do?
"These are the questions the novelist asks about his characters and
therefore I understood that it was my vocation."
Soon, he moved to Algiers, where he was the chief lawyer for the National
Liberation Front (FLN), and represented Algerians accused of terrorism
against France. One of his clients, Djamila Bouhired, had been condemned
to death for setting a bomb in a cafi in the capital, and Mr. Verges
worked to have her sentence reduced. She was soon pardoned and the two
married and started a family.
After Algeria's independence from France, Mr. Verges moved on to represent
Palestinians accused of terrorism as well as the assassin of Patrice
Lumumba, the first post-colonial president of the Congo.
Then, one day in March, 1970, he disappeared without a trace. Gone for
eight years, he still won't say where. Even his wife did not know where he
was and divorced him in absentia. But theories abound: The Israeli Mossad
was after him and so he vanished; he was with the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine in Syria; he was in Cambodia with Pol Pot or in
the Congo.
Upon finally re-emerging, he resumed his law practice and accepted
increasingly controversial clients, including the African dictators said
to have made his fortune in the 1980s. So it came as no surprise to the
Paris bar when Mr. Verges announced he was to be Saddam Hussein's lawyer.
In the words of one local lawyer, he is "diversely appreciated" by his
peers. They understand that, in a democratic society, everyone has a right
to be represented, no matter how heinous their crime, but some reproach
him for actively seeking out the most odious characters (he reportedly
offered his services as soon as Mr. Hussein was captured).
Other colleagues criticize the trademark Verges defence strategy, which
involves point-blank challenging the authority of the court -- just the
strategy he plans to use for Saddam.
He argues that the court does not have the right to judge his client
because the Iraqi Provisional Authority is "a government of
collaborators."
"How can you have a fair trial overseen by the political enemies of Mr.
Hussein?" he asks. "When there isn't a government in place that has been
elected democratically and without a constitution, there can be no
judiciary. Therefore if [a trial] were ever to be done under these
circumstances it would be a scandal."
Even the facts don't warrant a trial, he adds. "They reproach him, rightly
or wrongly of using deadly weapons. But who sold him these weapons? The
United States and England. If a trial takes place on the use of these
weapons, [U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald] Rumsfeld, who was an
intermediary at the time for the sale of these weapons, should sit beside
Saddam Hussein."
Mr. Verges says he plans to call both Mr. Rumsfeld and former secretary of
state Henry Kissinger as witnesses and then demand that they, too, be
arrested. With luck, this will shift the spotlight away from his client on
to the West's foreign policy.
Then Mr. Verges says something revealing. He says he sees every trial as
the plot of a novel, but a novel of which he is a co-author and can
influence how the story will end. "This trial is the story of the world
and the suffering of the world," he says.
And his desire to write a chapter that helps to curtail the West's
involvement in the Middle East is what is drawing Mr. Verges into the
courtroom once more.
Justice delayed
The Iraqi special tribunal that is to hear the many cases being mounted
against Baath party officials for crimes against humanity is far from
ready.
Salem Chalabi, a former capital-markets specialist at the prestigious
London law firm Clifford Chance and nephew of recently disgraced exile
leader Ahmed Chalabi, has been appointed as the head of the tribunal.
But the basic infrastructure for a judicial system has yet to be put in
place. Prisons must be secured, and about 2,000 people hired to fill
positions ranging from office help and court clerks to judges.
The Iraqi tribunal will differ from recent international attempts to try
alleged perpetrators of genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In
those cases, foreign judges preside whereas Iraqis will sit on their own
tribunal.
However, acceptable candidates can neither be former Baathists nor victims
of Saddam Hussein, which leaves only a small pool of judges from which to
choose.
Also, despite the efforts to create a strong tribunal, its legitimacy is
already being questioned. Human Rights Watch has criticized the court
because under its mandate, murder and rape are punishable by death -- and
there is no stipulation that guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
(source: Sarah Elton works at CBC Radio's Metro Morning and recently spent
4 months in Paris; Globe and Mail)
