> But I do wonder at the "trial process" that is upcoming.
>
> Aside from the irony of the U.S. trying to set up some international
> criminal court...
>
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Logistics for Hussein Trial Are Complex By Peter Slevin Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 14, 2003; 3:45 PM
Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council intends to prosecute Saddam Hussein in an Iraqi court for three decades of violent misrule and abuse of power, officials in Baghdad and Washington said today.
The Bush administration, which has spent millions of dollars gathering evidence against Hussein and his top lieutenants, expects to advise investigators and judges, but will leave the principal decisions to Iraqis, State Department officials reported.
Hussein "will face the justice he denied to millions," President Bush told an international television audience.
Any trial of Hussein would be a hugely complicated undertaking, especially for an Iraqi justice system that barely exists eight months after U.S. forces captured Baghdad. Human rights organizations raised questions today about the credibility of a still-unformed Iraqi tribunal that would operate with U.S. backing.
American and Iraqi officials will meet in coming days to discuss Hussein's future and the procedures necessary to put him on trial, said a State Department official. The Governing Council just last week approved the creation of a special court to try Hussein and members of his former government.
"We have judges and prosecutors and courts," Iraqi Governing Council member Mahmoud Othman said at the time. "Iraqis should deal with the crimes of Iraqis. We can handle it."
According to the monitoring group Human Rights Watch, Hussein's Baath Party leadership "perpetrated crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, 'disappearances,' and summary and arbitrary executions" during his 34-year rule. In 1988, the group said, "more than 100,000 Kurds, mostly men and boys, were trucked to remote sites and executed."
In addition, Hussein's government used chemical weapons against rebellious Kurds, killing thousands in their villages, including women and children.
Since the late 1970s, Human Rights Watch reported, at least 290,000 Iraqis "disappeared" at the hands of Hussein's security forces, including most of an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Shiite men and boys who were imprisoned in the 1980s.
Under the law setting up Iraq's war crimes tribunal, Iraqi judges will be nominated by a special judicial board and approved by the Governing Council, which will appoint prosecutors, defense lawyer and investigators. International experts would provide expertise.
Still, many specialists have questioned Iraq's readiness to handle a case as vast as one against Hussein. Everything from rules of criminal procedure to the legal code itself must be overhauled before a trial can begin. No trial could take place for months, at least, analysts maintained.
A U.N. team said in August that Iraq's "degraded" justice system was "not capable of rendering fair and effective justice for violations of international humanitarian law and other serious criminal offenses involving the prior regime."
American University law professor Diane Orentlicher, citing "serious concerns" about the current capacity of the Iraqi legal system, argued today for a judicial hybrid modeled on the court in Sierra Leone, where local judges sit side by side with international colleagues.
"We're talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of crimes," said Orentlicher, who advises the U.N. project in Sierra Leone. She said the credibility of the process would be enhanced by broad international participation.
"There is the risk that prosecutions undertaken by Iraqi courts supported only by American forces will be seen as dispensing victors' justice," Orentlicher said.
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said, "We should internationalize this as much as we can, so it gains credibility." The prosecution must be done "extremely professionally," he told CNN. "That will require the help of the United Nations international crime tribunal people to be able to help the Iraqis do it," Biden said.
The International Criminal Court established last year is not an option. It has no jurisdiction over crimes that occurred before July 1, 2002, and Iraq was not a signatory to the convention that established the court.
The fact that the Governing Council -- responsible for establishing the new tribunal -- was appointed by the Bush administration is another cause for worry, said Tom Malinowski, Washington representative of Human Rights Watch.
"Saddam Hussein's capture is a welcome development, and it's important that the Iraqi people feel ownership of his trial," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a written statement. "But it's equally important that the trial not be perceived as vengeful justice. For that reason, international jurists must be involved in the process."
The Bush administration, which pressed the Governing Council to leave open the possibility of a larger international role, recognizes a need for any trial of Hussein to be perceived as fair.
"Everyone," said a senior State Department official, "has a stake in what happens to Saddam."