BAGHDAD,
October 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The long
awaited trial of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein went ahead
Wednesday, October 19, but Iraq's former strong man refused to
acknowledge the court, as human rights groups and law experts voiced
concerns over the chances of a "fair trial".
A
bearded Saddam, wearing a grey suit with an open-necked white shirt
and carrying a copy of the Noble Qur'an, described himself as the
"president of Iraq", according to footage broadcast from the
courtroom with a delay of about 30 minutes.
"I
don't acknowledge either the entity that authorizes you nor the
aggression because everything based on falsehood is falsehood,"
Saddam told the chief judge.
Saddam,
68, was led into his trial by two guards.
As
he entered the courtroom, he gestured with his hand to slow the guards
down. Saddam sat alone in the front pen, and the other defendants
spread among the other two pens.
Chief
judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd, asked repeatedly Saddam to state
his name, profession and tribal name but he refused.
Saddam
is on trial along with seven other defendants for the 1982 murder of
143 Shiites from Dujail village, allegedly as revenge for an attempt
on Saddam's life.
The
defendants, including Barzan Ibrahim Hassan Al-Tikriti, Saddam's
half-brother and a former director of the feared Mukhabarat
intelligence service, and former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan,
sat in steel-barred waist-high pens equipped with microphones.
In
Dujail, villagers, including women clutching pictures of slain
relatives, waved banners urging "death for Saddam Hussein".
The
charge for which Saddam is being tried Wednesday was not among other
charges at a pre-trial hearing in July 2004, where Saddam appeared
defiant and combative.
Saddam
was then told he would to face charges over the gassing of 5,000
people in the Kurdish village of Halabja in March 1988; the 1980-1988
Iran-Iraq war, during which around one million people were killed; the
1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the violent suppression of a Shiite
uprising the following year reported the Agence France Presse (AFP).
Legal
Limbo
Law
experts and human rights groups, meanwhile, doubted the fairness of
the trial and its very legality.
"Saddam
Hussein knows the law and he was right not to identify himself before
a court that lacks legality in the first place," law expert
Hassan Ahmed Omar told Al-Jazeera, commenting on Saddam's trial and
his refusal to identify himself.
"According
to international law, the trial is null and void. Saddam, as he told
the judge, is the legal elected leader of Iraq. But the court was set
up by an occupying force that enjoys no legality," he added.
The
Egyptian international law expert further said that Saddam –
regardless of the crimes he has committed – is legally a
"kidnapped person who is standing trial by his own
kidnappers".
Human
rights groups, for their part, have expressed unease about the
possibility of "victor's justice", warning that the trial
must not only be fair, but be seen to be fair, and raising concerns
about the legitimacy of a body set up during US occupation.
Human
Rights Watch, which exhaustively documented atrocities committed
during Saddam's regime, has expressed doubts the trial will be fair,
according to Reuters.
The
US-based group said problems with the tribunal and its statute include
the lack of a requirement to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt,
disputes among Iraqi politicians over court control and a ban on any
commutation of death sentences.
Concerns
 |
|
Human Rights Watch director Richard Dicker. (Reuters)
|
The
leading rights group has warned that the special Iraqi tribunal set up
with US sponsorship to try Saddam Hussein may not be able to give the
former dictator and his top aides a fair trial.
The
controversial legality of the Special Tribunal, set up especially to
try crimes against humanity, war crimes and charges of genocide
committed between July 1968 -- when Saddam's Baath party came to power
-- and May 2003, when he was ousted, may undermine the legitimacy of
any trial outcome.
The
tribunal was set up in December 2003 by the US-dominated Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA). The parliament elected in January 2005 is
due to legitimize the court and rename it the Iraqi Higher Criminal
Court.
Human
Rights Watch, however, is not convinced it can be a fair forum, and
has issued an 18-page report detailing the tribunal's shortcomings.
"From
an early stage, the US consistently opposed an international tribunal
or mixed Iraqi-international court under United Nations auspices"
that would have given the process more legitimacy, the rights group
wrote.
The
CPA "insisted on an 'Iraqi-led' process -- without establishing a
transparent process to consult Iraqis or assess Iraqi attitudes
towards issues of justice and accountability", the report reads.
The
rights group worries that evidence was not protected following
Saddam's downfall in April 2003 after the US-led invasion and has been
compromised.
British
daily the Times reported Tuesday that the judge trying Saddam
Hussein and his aides have been secretly trained in Britain during the
past few months.
The
paper further cited sources with the International Bar Federation
(IBF) as saying 20 Iraqi judges – including the five who sat on the
bench Wednesday – have been trained by the IBF, along with 23
prosecution representatives.
The
trainers included judges and lawyers from the United States, Sweden,
Holland, Australia and other countries, according to the UK daily.
Judge
Amin, Kurd, presided over the trial of Saddam Hussein Wednesday, as
five judges were on the panel.
Amin
has served as an investigating judge for 10 years in his native city
of Sulaimaniyah, in the Kurdish north of Iraq, where he also worked as
a lawyer for three years. He was born in 1957 and studied law at the
University of Baghdad.
