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Saddam Trial: Who is in charge?
Kourosh Zaim
Unlike
Milosevic's and the Nuremberg trials, Saddam's is not so
straight forward, and the plaintiffs not so much in command
position.
Saddam was
initially to be charged with some 500 counts of crimes for
which documentation and witnesses can be produced. The
charges were later reduced to ten most publicized, such as
killings of religious leaders, executions of hundreds who
rebelled against him in 1977, assassinations in foreign
lands, war against Iran, invasion of Kuwait, use of chemical
weapons, etc. Under the laws governing the trials, he could
be sentenced to death thousands of times. But, that's not
what's happening.
First of all,
because of the time it takes to prepare "defense
documentation", Saddam is now being tried only for mass
executions in Dujail where he ordered murder of some 148
people, torture and detention of some 4000 inhabitants in
Samawa desert and destruction of all orchards in retaliation
of attempt on his life. The crime may seem gruesome, but
it's one his milder achievements!
After months of
preparation, first day of trial was all devoted to
procedural matters, Saddam's plead of not guilty and his
questioning of the legitimacy of the court. He claims he
committed no crime, because it was the Iraqi law being
administered for crime against the state. He had merely
signed the death verdicts as the head of state which he
still is! The second session also ended in delay, seeming
more deliberate than procedural. Observing the trial, it
seems to me that there is no real will to try Saddam
Hussein.
The Americans I
think plan to achieve two goals by supporting the dragging
process. One is for display of the due process, as is
practiced in English Law, as a show of fairness and
democracy in action, thus legitimatizing their ulterior
design for a western-style democratic government in Iraq as
the fairest of them all. The problem is that Iraq's
French-Egyptian style legal system of Hammurabic and
Napoleonic heritage does not exactly conform. Here, there is
no jury and the chief of five-judge panel is also the chief
investigator. In this court, judges are afraid to show their
faces, chief judge afraid to investigate, prosecutors afraid
to prosecute and the defense afraid to defend!
The second
reason, I believe, is that the Americans don't want Saddam
be tried for the war against Iran. He might sing and spill
the beans about American vital assistance and encouragements
during that war. The revelation will weaken public position
of U.S. policy against Iran and embolden the Islamic
republic on the international stage.
They are in a
dilemma. If they bargain with Saddam to keep quiet in return
for a milder sentence, it will be mud in the face once
exposed. Considering the nosy American press and the
loud-speaking opposing Democrats, it will be self-defeating.
So the only way out is to drag the trials until people get
tired of hearing about it and eager to end it with the very
first sentencing.
One thing the
Americans seem not to understand is that dragging the trial
is not to their best interest or the Iraqis'. I have said
twice here before, when Saddam was in hiding and again after
he was found, that as long as he is alive the insurgency and
bloodshed will continue and with increased intensity. I
repeat this again that keeping Saddam alive or in Iraq is a
major cause of daily bloodshed.
Saddam's band of
devoted Baathists who had everything under him and have
nothing now, who can't even show their faces in public for
fear of arrest or public revenge, constitute the core of the
insurgency. They don't even mind assisting Al-Qaeda foreign
terrorists against Americans. They know very well that if
Saddam ever returns to power, no Al-Qaeda operative will
stay alive in Iraq.
When Saddam was
in hiding, through a broadcast taped message, he ordered his
followers to "jihad and resistance". In retrospect, we also
recall his statement of threat before the invasion that
Americans will face "blood bath" in Iraq. The American
intelligence should have paid more attention. Americans
defeated his machinery, but did not decommission it. Ever
since the taped message, the level of bloodshed has been
escalating and thousands have died.
Delaying the
trial will cost more lives and more problems for the Bush
administration. It's easy to observe that Saddam appears
more confident as time passes. He is now the one in command
not the Iraqi judiciary. As long as his followers have the
tiniest hope for his return, they will fight. They will
fight until the country is drawn into civil war and the
Coalition is forced to abandon. The question is: Is the life
of the most savage man in recent history worth so much agony
and bloodshed? The Americans should let Iraqis try him
without meddling, or else turn the man over to the
International Criminal Tribunal and let it do what it's
designed to do.
(TV4
Forum 05-12-01 and article in Iran Daily, 05-12-07)
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