The Saddam Trial: Justice or Farce?
| quote: | In the months after Saddam Hussein's capture, one pledge rang out. George Bush declared that Saddam would receive the justice he had "denied ... to the people of Iraq". Paul Bremer foresaw "the kind of justice he denied his own people". Dick Cheney guaranteed "the justice he denied to millions". Similar words from different politicians are not necessarily false. But a statement promising justice while presuming guilt is worth scrutinising - and the closer one looks, the more dubious it seems.
The most ardent apologist for the Iraqi special tribunal would admit that it has teething troubles. To characterise its dismissals, resignations and assassinations as such is, however, to underestimate the problem. The courtroom drama is less farce than tragicomedy; and history offers countless reminders of what Iraqis might expect for a denouement.
[...]
The most significant legacy of 1945 is not the platitude that Saddam will get the justice he denied his people. It is a warning uttered by Robert Jackson, the US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg: "If you are determined to execute a man in any case, there is no occasion for a trial. The world yields no respect to courts that are merely organised to convict." Events in the Green Zone have, it seems, become precisely what Jackson reviled: a ritual aimed at prosecuting Saddam very publicly to death.
[...]
To laud Saddam's trial as a humanitarian milestone is a politician's lie. Iraq's invaders opened up an inferno, including notions of justice as foreseeable as they are loathsome. The prosecution will never symbolise the rebirth of the rule of law. The hanging to come will signify nothing but sleight of hand. A more fitting tribute to the tragedy unleashed by Operation Iraqi Freedom would be Saddam's head, shot through the temple and stuck on a pole, with nary a human-rights lawyer in sight. But that's just a legal opinion. |
Full article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1746292,00.html
Saddam isn't going to get any sympathy from me, regardless of the verdict, but I think this article raises some good points. There have been several occasions throughout the trial of Saddam Hussein where the process has been legally dubious at best (for instance not allowing Saddam to talk with his defence team, continuing the trial in the absense of Saddam and his lawyers etc.) and this - for me - undermines the legitimacy of the entire trial. Where the verdict seems almost pre-ordained, and attempts are made to prevent Saddam Hussein from properly defending the charges raised against him, the televised procedings seem almost farcical and are antithetical to the "Iraqi justice" that this trial is supposed to be demonstrating to the world.
It's fairly clear that Saddam is guilty of the charges brought against him and I've got no doubt that in a fair, thorough trial this would be the eventual verdict. The question therefore has to be, why aren't more attempts being made to ensure that Saddam Hussein is receiving at least the most basic of legal rights (presumption of innocence, right to proper counsel etc.)? If failing to grant him these rights just detracts from the legitimacy of the outcome, surely it is in the interest of those staging the trial to ensure they are granted to the former dictator in full?
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Anti-Purple Alliance.
