On Sunday came the anticipated verdict following the trial of Iraq’s former leader Saddam Hussein – death by hanging. Early media reports described Saddam as shaking and shaken. In reality, he fluctuated between being anger, defiance and composure. The BBC’s correspondent in Iraq John Snow, who attended the sentencing, said he noticed a smile on the former Iraqi President’s face as he left the court building. There will be a High Court appeal but few believe the nine appellant judges will overturn the verdict. In the same way the intelligence that was spun to facilitate the invasion of Iraq was a “done deal , so was the trial’s outcome. A poster on the Guardian’s “Have your Say section described the process as “The best show trial since Stalin, adding, “Bring on the hanging! He’s right. It was, indeed, a politically-motivated show trial. Even the sentencing date is suspicious coming two days before mid-term elections in the US, and bearing in mind the court does not usually sit on Sundays. White House spokesman Tony Snow was driven to deny any such collusion. “The idea that somehow we’ve been scheming and plotting with the Iraqis is preposterous, he said. Not according to one of Saddam’s legal team Bushra El-Khelil, who said she had been approached by the Americans and asked to refrain from vigorously defending her client. This isn’t to say that Saddam Hussein shouldn’t have faced a court. But this farce, dubbed “an Egyptian movie and “a mockery of justice from a sham of a court set up by the American occupiers by El-Khelil, was politicized to the extent of being worthless. Amid protests from the UN and the UK, the death penalty was reintroduced in 2004 for the purpose of ensuring the demise of Saddam and his co-defendants, so some commentators believe. After all, the former government hierarchy harbors too many secrets regarding America’s role in the eight-year-long Iraq-Iran war and crucially whether Saddam was given a US green light to invade Kuwait. If you recall, Iraqi scientists presented a 12,000 page WMD declaration to the UNSC in December 2002 that was hastily swiped by the US “for photocopying before it was handed to Security Council member countries, who complained that entire swathes had been blacked-out including names of US weapons suppliers. As for the trial itself it was prejudiced from day one by comments from members of the Iraq government including Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi and former Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan, who called for Saddam’s execution years before Saddam was even pronounced guilty. On the eve of the verdict, the Iraqi Prime Minister Nour Al-Maliki said he hoped Saddam “gets what he deserves . Moreover, while the prosecution had months to prepare for the trial, the defense team was barred from access to its clients until the last minute, while foreign lawyers were precluded from participating other than as observers. Worse, the defense team was not provided with security despite numerous pleas to the court following the assassination of two defense lawyers and the fleeing abroad of another. “The court was not impartial. There were not adequate steps taken to protect the security of defense lawyers and witnesses, said Malcolm Smart of Amnesty International. The UN’s Director-General Kofi Annan and various UN bodies have also questioned the court’s fairness. In fact, the defense team walked out of the court in protest and stayed out on several occasions, which left the defendants without representation or meant they had to rely on court-appointed lawyers with little knowledge of the case. At the same time judges have been changed in both the Dujail and the subsequent Anfal trial for being too soft on Saddam. Judge Rizgar Amin, who initially presided over Dujail, resigned due to political pressure and was replaced by Rauf Abdel Rahman, a Kurdish judge who made no secret of his disdain for the defendants or his belief in their guilt. Chief Judge in the Anfal trial Abdullah Amiri was sacked because he was too sympathetic to the former Iraqi leader. His successor is a tough Shiite who obstructs cross-questioning of witnesses and silences defendants. The way that witnesses have been presented is another point of contention. Some have been allowed to give evidence anonymously from behind screens. Others have complained of intimidation. Alleged victims of the former Iraqi regime, pronounced dead by the prosecution, have allegedly turned up alive and kicking in Iran and Algeria. Within Iraq, responses to the news have been varied and follow closely along sectarian lines. In some Shiite areas there is jubilation. Kurds are said to be quietly satisfied. The Sunni reaction varies from indifference to fury and calls for revenge. Reaction from Iraq’s occupiers has predictably reeked of hypocrisy. Britain’s Home Secretary John Reid praised the verdict as a sovereign decision taken by a sovereign nation. One can only wonder how he managed to keep a straight face. Iraq’s sovereignty is just as meaningless as George Bush’s “Mission accomplished . Even Al-Maliki recently admitted that he had to ask US permission before he could move his troops, and, let’s face it, if Iraq was a sovereign country what on earth is its ‘sovereign’ government doing allowing Americans to hold their prisoners. But here’s where the hypocrisy comes in. The British government is vehemently against the death penalty and has recently requested Pakistan to commute the death sentence of a British-Pakistani charged with murdering a taxi-driver. Britain’s extradition policies also bar citizens to be extradited to countries where the death penalty is practiced unless those countries agree to waive that right while Turkey had to foreswear the death penalty before it could be considered for EU membership. Yet in Britain, politician after politician are falling over themselves to congratulate the Iraqi people on the verdict and the Iraqi judicial process. The BBC should be ashamed of itself too. On Sunday, it looked more like a propaganda arm for the British government than a respected broadcaster. Almost all its so-called Iraq experts were anti-Saddam exiles, who were allowed to rant on about Saddam’s victims by anchors who never thought to mention the 655,000 Iraqis who have died as a result of the 2003 invasion. Abu Ghraib was conveniently forgotten too. In the final analysis, Saddam should have been tried in an international court because, as Saad Jabaar a lawyer said, “You won’t find one person in Iraq who is not biased . Both the accused and the victims of Dujail and Anfal have been wronged. The verdict of a kangaroo court whose strings are being pulled by a foreign power will inevitably be recorded by history as null and void leaving Saddam s guilt for ever held in doubt.
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on the Middle East. She can be reached at [email protected]
