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American Burlesque
The Saddam Hussein trial: an exercise in sophistry
BY S. NIHAL SINGH
To the historical debate on crime and punishment, the
Saddam Hussein trial has added a farcical footnote bearing the attributes
of a burlesque rather than the serious question of a dictator charged with
many deaths during nearly 30 years of rule. Indeed, it is difficult to
understand American moves in bringing Saddam on trial except in the
fantasy world of the Iraq they have built for themselves after their
invasion and occupation of the country.
If Slobodan Milosevic’s trial before the special
international criminal court in The Hague was decried by Serbs – and not
Serbs alone – as an example of victor’s justice, the Baghdad trial of
Saddam, entirely choreographed by Americans, in a country that remains
under their occupation, is no longer a trial, if it ever was. It is an
exercise in sophistry. Presumably, the American motive was to demonstrate
to Iraqis and Arabs that the evil are punished by the virtuous and the
good.
But that was a seemingly long time ago when the world was
divided between the axis of evil and a gallant and powerful rescuer. One
hundred US troops were not dying in one month nor were 100 Iraqis every
day. Long after Saddam was captured in an underground hideout, Iraq
teeters on the precipice of a civil war, President George W. Bush’s
popularity ratings have plunged, Vietnam has returned to haunt America and
the US establishment is wrestling with how to extract its troops out of
the Iraq morass.
And as the trial has spluttered and resumed, defence
lawyers have been murdered, two judges removed and prosecution witnesses
tutored to reveal a web of lies on all sides, including those on the
defence side. Americans conducted much of the evidence gathered against
Saddam, their attorneys tutored the judges, an American company provided
the television link blocking segments of inconvenient proceedings and
there was not much suspense in taking the nine month long trial in the
first case to a climax. The death sentence handed out to Saddam and others
conveniently came two days before important US Congressional elections.
The second case in the Anfal trial against Kurds has yet to be completed.
The Bush administration has been living on illusions:
their troops being greeted as liberators in Iraq, building Iraq as a
modern democracy in the Arab world, "mission accomplished" long before the
heartaches and travails began in earnest and the hope that Saddam’s
capture and trial would bring an end to the then budding emergency. If the
Americans believe that a Saddam verdict will bring a sense of closure to
the distressingly painful chapters in Iraqis’ lives, they are mistaken.
A central American concern in the trial has been to guard
against Saddam using it as a pulpit to gather support in the fashion of
Milosevic at The Hague. Despite the US-choreographed cuts to the
supposedly live coverage – the telecasts were broadcast 20 minutes late –
Saddam did use the trial as his pulpit, describing himself as the
President of Iraq, deriding the judges as puppets of the occupation regime
and even offering a homily on reconciling Shias and Sunnis. But the
American hand was no longer as hidden as it was believed to be and the
Iraqi government of the day got into the act by Prime Minister Nuri Al
Maliki declaring before the verdict that he wished to see Saddam executed.
For his part, Saddam declared that he would rather die at the hands of a
firing squad, as behoves a military man, than by hanging, the traditional
Iraqi execution.
What happens to a trial that is so patently flawed,
reduced to an apparition of prosecution and defence witnesses, of judges
who remain in their posts at the pleasure of the government, of the
American-crafted cage in which Saddam and his co-defendants sit (when they
are not thrown out), of the world’s press watching the strange proceedings
from a distance? The reaction of the Iraqi public is not hard to divine.
Sunnis are by and large suffering another humiliation, after being
deprived of primacy in governance. The Shias and Kurds are ostensibly
celebrating the process of "justice" although there is no sense of closure
for them.
Americans themselves have become listless over the trial
proceedings. There is no sense of triumph, as briefly captured by
President George W. Bush’s "mission accomplished" declaration on the deck
of a US aircraft carrier. Wars of choice are a serious business; they do
not lend themselves to a Hollywood setting – until afterwards. The Iraq
war will remain President Bush’s legacy in ways he did not envisage. That
will remain a modern American tragedy.
What lessons does the Saddam trial hold for Iraq, the
United States and the wider world? The debate on crime and punishment
remains inconclusive. America compromised itself and its values by making
a political point through the judicial process and its own troops’
excesses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo further compromised US conduct in
relation to Iraq. On the face of it, it is absurd to believe that a court
guided by an occupying power to try the country’s leader dethroned by an
invasion can carry conviction. The Bush administration thought it fit to
trade symbols for substance and justice by bringing Saddam to trial as it
did.
To compound the Bush administration’s problems, it went on
piling up problems for itself in how it conducted itself as an occupying
power. To sack the whole of Saddam’s army and gifting it to the insurgency
has few parallels for its idiocy. But then President Bush and his
neo-conservative advisers were making an ideological point. They were
primed to act as a modern day version of the Roman empire, enlightened
imperialists spreading democracy and light as long as it was understood
that their country was the perennial numero uno.
The American plot began to go wrong because one nation,
obscenely powerful as it is, cannot rule the modern world as the Romans
did. The nation state was a European invention even as Europe today is
seeking to subsume attributes of national sovereignty into a larger whole.
Nor has the United States learnt any lesson from the Ottoman empire, which
ruled its diverse subjects efficiently through enfranchising its subject
races through the military route not only to help the central authority
but also to acquire status. The nearest America got to it was by speeding
foreigners’ access to green cards if they would fight for America in its
new wars, particularly in Iraq.
(S. Nihal Singh is a well-known journalist and
commentator and the author of several books on current affairs.)
(Courtesy The Asian Age.)
http://www.asianage.com
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Opportunity missed: Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Press Release, November 5, 2006
Amnesty International deplores the decision of the
Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (SICT) to impose the death sentence on
Saddam Hussein and two of his seven co-accused after a trial
which was deeply flawed and unfair. The former Iraqi dictator was
sentenced today in connection with the killing of 148 people from al-Dujail
village after an attempt to assassinate him there in 1982. The trial,
which began in October 2005 almost two years after Saddam Hussein was
captured by US forces, ended last July. The verdict was originally due
to be announced on October 16 but was delayed because the court said it
needed more time to review testimony.
The case is now expected to go for appeal before the
SICT’s Cassation Panel following which, if the verdict were to be
upheld, those sentenced to death are to be executed within 30 days.
"This trial should have been a major contribution
towards establishing justice and the rule of law in Iraq, and in
ensuring truth and accountability for the massive human rights
violations perpetrated by Saddam Hussein’s rule," said Malcolm Smart,
director of the Middle East and North Africa programme. "In practice, it
has been a shabby affair, marred by serious flaws that call into
question the capacity of the tribunal, as currently established, to
administer justice fairly in conformity with international
standards."
In particular, political interference undermined the
independence and impartiality of the court, causing the first presiding
judge to resign and blocking the appointment of another, and the court
failed to take adequate measures to ensure the protection of witnesses
and defence lawyers, three of whom were assassinated during the course
of the trial. Saddam Hussein was also denied access to legal counsel for
the first year after his arrest and complaints by his lawyers throughout
the trial relating to the proceedings do not appear to have been
adequately answered by the tribunal.
"Every accused has a right to a fair trial, whatever the
magnitude of the charge against them. This plain fact was routinely
ignored through the decades of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. His overthrow
opened the opportunity to restore this basic right and, at the same
time, to ensure, fairly, accountability for the crimes of the past. It
is an opportunity missed," said Malcolm Smart, "and made worse by the
imposition of the death penalty."
Amnesty International will now follow closely the appeal
stage, where the evidence as well as the application of the law can be
reviewed, and the SICT has therefore an opportunity to redress the flaws
of the previous proceedings. However, given the grave nature of these
flaws and the fact that many of them continue to afflict the current
trial before the SICT, Amnesty International urges the Iraqi government
to seriously consider other options. These could include adding
international judges to the tribunal or referring the case to an
international tribunal – an option indicated by the UN Working Group on
Arbitrary Detention last September.
Saddam Hussein is currently being tried by the SICT,
together with six others, on separate charges arising from the so-called
Anfal campaign, when thousands of people belonging to Iraq’s Kurdish
minority were subject to mass killings, torture and other gross abuses
in 1988.
Amnesty International
1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW.
web:
http://www.amnesty.org
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Doubtful legitimacy and credibility: UN
United Nations
Press Release, November 6, 2006
Leandro Despouy, special rapporteur on the independence
of judges and lawyers, issued the following statement today:
A day after the Iraqi High Tribunal ended its first trial of Saddam
Hussein and sentenced him to death by hanging, the special rapporteur on
the independence of judges and lawyers, Leandro Despouy reiterates his
strong objections regarding the conduct of the trial and expresses his
concern about the consequences this judgement may have over the
situation in Iraq and in the region.
The following are among the main objections of the
special rapporteur:
Ø The restricted personal jurisdiction of the tribunal,
which enables it only to try Iraqis.
Ø Its limited temporal jurisdiction. The competence of
the tribunal does include neither the war crimes committed by foreign
troops during the first Gulf war (1990) nor the war crimes committed
after May 1, 2003, date of the beginning of the occupation.
Ø Its doubtful legitimacy and credibility. The tribunal
has been established during an occupation considered by many as illegal,
is composed of judges who have been selected during this occupation,
including non-Iraqi citizens, and has been mainly financed by the United
States.
Ø The fact that the statute of December 10, 2003
contains advanced provisions of international criminal law which are to
be applied in combination with an outdated Iraqi legislation, which
allows the death penalty.
Ø The negative impact of the violence and the insecurity
prevailing in the course of the trial and in the country. Since its
beginning, one of the judges, five candidate judges, three defence
lawyers and an employee of the tribunal have been killed. Moreover,
another employee of the tribunal has been seriously injured.
Ø Finally, and most importantly, the lack of observance
of a legal framework that conforms to international human rights
principles and standards, in particular the right to be tried by an
independent and impartial tribunal which upholds the right to a defence.
The special rapporteur welcomes the determination of the
Iraqi government to sanction the main authors of the atrocities
committed during three decades in the country and its will to see the
trial take place in Iraq. At the same time, he deems it essential that
this will be expressed through a trial conducted by an independent
tribunal, legitimately established, acting in absolute transparency and
providing all guarantees for a fair trial, in accordance with
international human rights standards. If those conditions are not
fulfilled, the verdict of the Iraqi High Tribunal, far from contributing
to the institutional credibility of Iraq and the rule of law, risks
being seen as the expression of the verdict of the winners over the
losers.
The special rapporteur urges the Iraqi authorities not
to carry out the death sentences imposed, as their application would
represent a serious legal setback for the country and would be in open
contradiction to the growing international tendency to abolish the death
penalty, as demonstrated by the increasing number of ratifications of
the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant of Civil and
Political Rights.
It is clear that the verdict and its possible
application will contribute to deepen the armed violence and the
political and religious polarisation in Iraq, bringing with it the
almost certain risk that the crisis will spread to the entire region.
The trial of Saddam Hussein has a particular
significance not only for the thousands of victims in Iraq but also for
its symbolism in the fight against impunity throughout the world. In
this context, the special rapporteur reiterates the proposal for the
establishment of an independent, impartial and international tribunal
with all the necessary guarantees to enable it to receive the support of
the United Nations and which will take advantage of the rich experience
acquired by other international tribunals. Since the present verdict is
subject to appeal, it opens the possibility to consider the
establishment of such an international tribunal, which can guarantee a
fair trial, either by reopening the present trial or by dealing with the
appellate stage. This should be done with urgency, to attenuate the
negative impact this verdict has already started to produce in Iraq and
the proliferation of violence in the region. Another reason for the
establishment of such a tribunal is that the current trial is only a
stage in a larger judicial process, since it only examines seven
charges, which include genocide and crime against humanity, amongst the
numerous ones attributed to Saddam Hussein and his close collaborators.
http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/0/0C31EA1E56E5D3FFC125721E005F706C?opendocument
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