- BAGHDAD -- Iraq's deposed
dictator Saddam Hussein is unlikely to stand trial for at least another
two years, the Guardian has learned.
-
- The Iraqi special tribunal for crimes against humanity
is months away from hearing its first case, and when the trials begin in
October or November the first defendants to appear will be high-ranking
Ba'ath party officials.
-
- Muhammad Zimam Abd al-Razzaq al-Sadun, the former Ba'ath
party chairman and commander of the militia in Baghdad, was reported to
have been captured yesterday, bringing the number caught since US authorities
issued their "most wanted" deck of 52 cards to 44.
-
- "I think it will take two years to get to Saddam
being tried," said Salem Chalabi, one of the architects of the court
and a nephew of the influential Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, head of the
Iraqi National Congress.
-
- The need to select and screen judges, prepare courts
and establish well-guarded jails to hold the suspects have led to delays.
"There are frustrations," said Mr Chalabi.
-
- The court has to balance the demand of most Iraqis for
a rapid show trial of Saddam and his deputies with the need to establish
an impartial model for the new judiciary.
-
- "It is a balance that we have to work here between
trying to protect defendants' rights and meet international standards of
due process of law and the wish of the Iraqis for quick vengeance,"
said Mr Chalabi.
-
- He said he was under pressure from American officials
to limit the tribunal's cases "for political reasons" - apparently
because they want to avoid further alienating Iraq's Sunni community, from
which Saddam and most of his close aides are drawn.
-
- "The US wants us not to make it more than 30 or
50 [cases]," he said. "I envisage 300."
-
- In Saddam's trial, prosecutors are likely to focus on
around a dozen of the most heinous accusations, including the Anfal campaign
against the Kurds in the late 1980s, the crushing of the 1991 uprising,
ethnic cleansing and persecution of the Shias.
-
- Iraqi officials want to prevent him politicising his
trial in the way the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has done
by calling in former western government leaders to account for the support
they showed Saddam before the first Gulf war in 1991.
-
- The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who visited
Saddam in 1983 and 1984, is among those who could face unwelcome questioning.
-
- Not all Ba'athists who committed crimes can possibly
be brought before the court. Iraqi officials hope to run some kind of reconciliation
effort similar to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
-
- "If we try and chase all the criminals who caused
harm to the Iraqi people there will be an infinite chain of cases,"
said Nawar Mohammad Nasser, the chief judge at a criminal court in Baghdad.
-
- Unlike the international courts set up in the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Iraqi tribunal will be run by the Iraqis.
-
- Mr Chalabi, who is leading the establishment of the court,
has lived outside Iraq for many years and worked as a lawyer specialising
in capital markets at Clifford Chance in London.
-
- He was a founding member of Indict, an organisation that
documented evidence against Saddam's regime, and was also involved in discussions
on the tribunal with the US state department before the war.
-
- The tribunal has the power to investigate and try only
cases of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and three crimes
particular to Iraq: manipulating the judiciary, squandering public assets
and starting a war against another Arab country.
-
- Each trial will have five judges. There will be a team
of 20 "investigative judges" to draw up evidence against suspects
and a nine-member appeal court. Plea-bargaining will be permitted.
-
- Crimes involving murder and rape will be punishable by
death - by hanging for civilians and by firing squad for army officers.
-
- But already there have been serious criticisms of the
court. Human Rights Watch described it as "fundamentally flawed"
last month because it will use judges who have no experience of crimes
against humanity, because the death penalty is not prohibited and because
there is no explicit insistence that guilt must be proven beyond reasonable
doubt.
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1149035,00.html
|
