The NYT mag has two (or perhaps more) good pieces in it today. One is this consideration by Peter Landesman of some of the trials of trying Saddam Hussein.
The piece reveals that Salem Chalabi, the INC-appointed head of the “Iraqi Special tribunal” is not completely stupid. (What it does not reveal are the strong pro-Likud inclinations of Marc Zell, whom Landesman mentions. Zell is the Israeli settler who was SC’s partner in the commercial-law company the two of them set up in Baghdad immediately after the start of the US occupation.)
Anyway, not completely stupid:
- ”Iraqis have their own goals for this tribunal, not that it brings justice but that it punishes people,” said Salem Chalabi, the Iraqi exile, nephew of Ahmad Chalabi and general director of the Iraqi Special Tribunal since April. ”I’m treading a thin line between what Iraqis want, which is a quick process to judge Saddam guilty and just kill him, and what the international community desires, which is due process, a fair trial. All this will end up being thrown aside if you let Iraqis take over. They may just want to go ahead and create a new kind of process and just kill everybody, which is a realistic alternative.” He added, ”A lot can go wrong.”
The piece also reveals that US investigators and prosecutions specialists continue to do much of the work of preparing Saddam’s indictment, even after Saddam’s largely nominal “handover” to the “legal custody” (but not the physical custody) of new Iraqi quasi-government.
Landesman quotes Zuhair Almaliky, the chief investigative judge of Iraq’s central criminal court, as saying: ”This tribunal is not ours; it is somebody who came from abroad who created a court for themselves… ‘Chalabi selected the judges according to his political opinions.”
He quotes M. Cherif Bassiouni, the former chairman of a United Nations commission to investigate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, as saying:
- ”The trial could be an extraordinary opportunity to send a message to the tyrants of the Arab world… But the deck is being stacked, and it’s going to be obvious. . . . Where in the world can you say this is an independent judiciary, with U.S. proxies appointing and controlling judges, with U.S.-gift-wrapped cases?” [He paused, then continued:] ”A team of 20 lawyers is going to defend Saddam, including presidents of Arab bar associations. They’re not there to defend Saddam as a person as much as oppose a system of victor’s vengeance. . . . In the Arab world there is already the perception this is a mockery.”
Later, Landesman writes:
- Taking a lesson from the protracted trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague — two years and running, with no end in sight — Chalabi says that he has tried to set up rules of procedure that will keep Hussein from turning the trial into political theater… The rules, for instance, will keep Hussein from calling witnesses who aren’t directly tied to the charges before the court. But this might not be the case when it comes to the sentencing portion of a trial. Political context and intention may be admissible as mitigating circumstances. If they are, Hussein’s attorneys are certain to call American and other foreign officials and businessmen to testify.
Oh, the prospect of those US officials and businessmen being called to testify… It’s all so intriguing, eh? (I first wrote about some of these same issues here, back on december 17, 2003.)
Of course, the prospect of US officials and businessmen getting called to testify will be heavily influenced by what exact charges end up on Saddam’s charge-sheet. If, as the current US administration doubtless hopes, they are able to keep any hint of charges related to Saddam’s aggressive war against Iran, 1980-88, and his use during that war of chemical weapons against Iranian solders and Iranian and Iraqi civilian Kurds quite off the charge-sheet, then the prospect of D. Rumsfeld and other American “witnesses and/or co-conspirators” from that era being called would be so much the less.
Coincidentally, in the WaPo Outlook section today, Iranian-American writer Afshin Molavi has a fine little piece of reportage about some of the Iranian survivors of those CW attacks.
Molavi writes:
- The trial of Saddam Hussein will not be morally complete unless he is forced to confront the chemical atrocities committed against Iranian soldiers. Visiting the hospital wards last summer, I saw one of his victims shake spasmodically as he coughed up blood. “Very common,” an orderly explained, as he patted the man’s back. Others could barely eat, their throats and intestines lacerated by mustard gas. On one of my visits, one veteran succumbed to a chemical-induced cancer, dying shortly after watching a European soccer match. “At least his final thoughts were on football,” the orderly said, “not that terrible war.”
During that “terrible war,” roughly a million people died or were injured on both sides. All told, up to 100,000 Iranians were affected by chemical weapons. An October 2002 CIA report estimated that roughly 20,000 Iranians were killed by Saddam’s gases. Another 5,000 still remain under medical surveillance today.
In the late stages of the war, a CIA report described the “regular and recurring” Iraqi use of chemical weapons as “an integral part” of war strategy. Over a five-year period, Iraqi commanders used mustard gas, sarin gas, the nerve agent tabun and other deadly chemicals that burned body tissue, collapsed lungs, paralyzed muscles, destroyed nervous systems, rendered victims blind and caused violent vomiting convulsions often leading to death.
It occurs to me that most Iraqi Shi-ites probably feel highly motivated to make sure that the offenses Saddam committed in launching and pursuing his aggressive war against Iran get adequately onto his charge-sheet. And as Iraq moves–however fitfully–toward s a situation of greater democracy, the views of those Shi-ites on matters like the conduct of the “Special Tribunal” are going to become more and more influential. (And why not?)
So it strikes me it’s going to be harder and harder for the Americans to keep those kinds of charges off the charge-sheet. Which doesn’t bode well for Bombs-Away Don, who clocked a bunch of frequent-flyer miles schmoozing with Saddam in the early and mid-1980s.
Gosh, and who has physical custody of Saddam these days? If I were his lawyers, I would be worrying quite hard that the poor prisoner might suddenly, oh, “slip on a piece of soap in his cell and die” or whatever the excuse was when people would end up dying in the custody of the apartheid regime in South Africa…
I tell you, this “trials of trying Saddam” story is going to continue to be worth watching.