March 10
IRAQ:
Judgement at Baghdad
Everyone agrees that Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, if tried properly,
should be found guilty of crimes against humanity. But a long list of
human rights groups and international law experts doubt if the tyrant and
his deputies will receive the due process and fair trials promised by US
and Iraqi authorities.
Legal observers are "concerned about the decision to use the death
penalty, unclear rules of evidence and what they see as the accused's
inadequate access to their lawyers," the Los Angeles Times wrote on
Sunday. "They also see an overall lack of transparency in the proceedings
and question whether the Iraqi judges have the expertise to handle such
far-reaching cases." Last week insurgents assassinated a judge and lawyer
for the special tribunal a day after the first charges were announced.
The 1st defendants will be 5 of Saddam's lieutenants, most notably his
half-brother Barzan and Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, both
implicated in a series of mass killings in 1982. Future defendants include
Saddam's notorious cousin, Ali Hassan Majid aka Chemical Ali, and the
former defense minister. The tribunal will use these cases to build a
paper trail against the leader himself, who likely won't be tried until
next year.
Unlike the 4 international war crimes tribunals currently run by the UN in
the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Rwanda, Saddam's trial
will be administered by Iraqis and supervised by America. Paul Bremer
created the Iraqi Special Tribunal in December 2003, naming Salem Chalabi,
Ahmad's nephew, as special prosecutor. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi
eventually pushed Chalabi aside by stacking the court with hand-picked
loyalists. The names of the tribunal's 35 judges and 400 staff members
have been shielded for security reasons, only increasing skepticism.
Then there's the question of US complicity. The American government
supplied Saddam with landmines for his war against Iran, and American
companies, with the government's approval, sold the chemical agents used
against Iranian troops and Iraq's own Kurdish population. A trial under
American occupation likely won't force Donald Rumsfeld to describe his
meetings with Saddam in 1983 and 1984, after the US knew he was deploying
chemical weapons. Or ask George Bush I why he issued a national security
directive in October 1989 calling for normal diplomatic relations between
the US and Iraq. Or why Colin Powell and Dick Cheney encouraged the Kurds
in the North and Shiites in the South to revolt, and then did nothing when
Saddam brutally suppressed the uprisings, leading to thousands of mass
graves.
"We want Saddam to talk," Alan Zangaga of the US-based Kurdish Human
Rights Watch told Inter Press Service. "We want to know from Saddam which
weapons he used and where he got them...We need this information
established in a court of law." Once public, the Kurds and other groups
targeted by Saddam could sue American companies for damages, similar to
how Holocaust survivors targeted Swiss banks.
Since the war, America has adopted a go-it-alone mentality especially
evident in the creation of the new tribunal. After failing to protect mass
grave sites and government ministries housing crucial evidence in the wake
of the invasion, coalition authorities rebuffed human rights groups when
they offered assistance to the tribunal. Kofi Annan, angered by the
tribunal's use of the death penalty and America's skirting of
international law, forbade The Hague from helping to train Iraqi lawyers
and judges. The State and Justice Departments are now assuming this
formidable task.
"Where in the world can you say this is an independent judiciary, with US
proxies appointing and controlling judges, with US-gift-wrapped cases?"
asks Cherif Bassiouni, former chairman of the UN war crimes investigation
in Yugoslavia. "In the Arab world, there is already the perception this a
mockery." America's cavalier overreach could also taint the tribunal's
legitimacy where it matters most. "This tribunal is not ours," Zuhair
Almaliky, the chief investigative judge of Iraq's central criminal court,
told The New York Times last summer. "It is somebody who came from abroad
who created a court for themselves."
Along with its revisionist rationale for the war (see democracy), the Bush
Administration hopes that Saddam's trial will overshadow the chaos sowed
by invasion and occupation. For the sake of Iraqis, justice should matter
more than PR.
(source: The Nation)
