I put up a post at Transitional Justice Forum today titled “Haiti, Iraq, and political transition”. It explores some of the “justice” issues involved in the very messy and risk-freighted post-election periods in Iraq and Haiti– and the role that “transitional justice” mechanisms can play (for good or ill) during such transitions…
Check it out.
One source I cite there is this report, from AP’s veteran Baghdad correspondent Hamza Hendawi, who writes that the trial is now having an unintended new unifying effect acorss sectarian lines inside Iraq– Iraqis are increasingly treating it as a sitcom! Including quotes from both a Shiite and Sunni, Hendawi writes, “Iraqis are united over one thing — the trial’s entertainment value.”
Oops, perhaps not quite what the US occupation authorities and their RCLO intended when they invested $138 million in this trial process.
Meanwhile, over at the “Grotian Moment” blog, which is group-authored by a large number of law professors, some of whom have played an active role in prearing and help organize the trial, giving “training” to its Iraqi judges in London, etc., there is an understandable degree of consternation at how things have been going there.
In this post, Michael Scharf, one of the judges’ trainers, explains how far he sees the trial falling short of the three “cardinal rules” that he, presumably, urged on them there. They were:
- Lesson #1: Keep [it] short.
Lesson #2: Keep it fair.
Lesson #3: Keep it under control.
David Crane, who was Chief Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone,wrote,
- I have a concern about an appearance of bias on the part of the new Chief Judge, currently presiding over this stage of the trial of Sadaam. An Iraqi Kurd, who lived in a village destroyed by Sadaam, a defendant, can give the appearance of just such a bias. This may bring a result that may appear to be unfair to this fledgling democracy. I am surprised that there has not been a stronger move to have the Chief Judge recused.
But most intriguing of all, on that blog past as on the one before it, there are some fairly lengthy comments from Saddam’s own preferred defense lawyer, the former Qatari Jusice Minister Dr. Najeeb al-Nuaimi.
The blogosphere really becomes a more and more interesting place, eh?
Saddam trial in 3 words: hard political porn. I really can’t imagine what else can be said about it.
Show trials and impeachments often simply aggravate sentiments. They harden people in their pre-conceived views.
The Nuremburg trials, if they seemed more concordant(?), it was because the audience was a world more or less united in its glee over German defeat. The occupied German population dared not balk. It was decimated, hurting, and anxious to avoid absorption into the Soviet sphere. The defendants also knew there was zero chance that any insurgent movement would free or vindicate them–except maybe long after they were dead. There were no live cameras or broadcasts to encourage rants and antics.
Most trials for “crimes against humanity” are likely to end up like that of Slobodan Milosevic, whose followers remain somewhat unrepentant. The trials of Omar Abdul Rahman or Zacarias Moussaoui are unlikely to dissuade terrorists. Saddam’s trial may simply excite and encourage Iraq’s Sunni population. Social and political groups generally presume their own people to be innocent and to presume the guilt of enemies.
Prosecution is also difficult because political leaders seldom put their signatures on execution or extermination warrants. Graft and patronage can be disguised in a 100 legal ways. Subordinates can be blamed for just about anything that goes wrong. And conspiracy theories come to the aid of people without any other explanations.
Saddam’s trial may not heal Iraq. An end to the insurgency may require some sort of amnesty to many people now engaged in violence.
On the other hand, clemency and leniency also present their hazards. Germany, Cuba, and Venezuela all released young firebrands who lead violent insurrections; all later returned to convert their countries to one-party autocracies. In 2004, Bremer wanted Muqtada al-Sadr arrested and tried. The cleric escaped and lead an insurgency. Now he’s a major political power-broker. Just shrug?
My view is that all attempts to inflict punishment, at all levels, are exercizes in power politics. Within a stable, settled society, the “modalities” whereby trying and punishing are undertaken are encoded in laws enacted by a legitimate legislating body; and these should– if the rule of law is to reign supreme– have the two qualities that they apply equally to everyone and they are publicly known or at least easily knowable.
The problem, in situations of radical political transition, is that there is, effectively no “legitimate” legislating body; the laws are decidedly not applied equally to everyone; and quite frequently– e.g. in situations of occupation by a foreign military power– they are not known by or, often, even knowable by the people to whom they are applied.
Ruti Teitel has dealt excellently, though at enormous length, with these issues in her book “Transitional Justice”. The bottom line is that TJ is actually a very weird form of justice, if indeed it is a form of justice at all.
Saddam’s trial may simply excite and encourage Iraq’s Sunni population.
Given your examples I think it’s just far from Saddam case.
US used this trial in two different goals or may be more
1- Internally, to cover their “Nation Building” goal in Iraq which most of the Iraqi/if not all hate this and what US/UK feed you of Sunni, Sha’at, Kurds this the most of you thinks there boundaries and there are separation between social groups that you dreams if its their. US/UK tried hardly to enforce those scenarios.
2- Show other Aarb/Muslimes leaders if they do not obey US demands and order there life will be miserable like Saddam.
I think if we take example from WWII trials as I heard that Mussolini when brought to the court the judge asked him one question before his sentence.
The question was “What’s You Name” and then put his sentence without further talk.
In Iraq case do we need evidence of the crimes this mad man did to Iraqi and to the country?
There is one article in the Iraqi law which is used by him for many years when Iraq lost the best of his Military commanders because they withdraw from some parts of the war zones during Iraq War. That article stated if any one flees the war zone will be prosecuted by Death Penalty!! so he did it without referred them to the court he Judge them and sentence them and shoot them , do we need more evidence, the article there so Judge him sentence him and lets the Iraqi shoot him because he flee the war zone…
Let us not forget that Michael Scharf’s function as a “trainer” for the judges, not to mention interviewee, is entirely political. This is a show trial conducted by and for the benefit of the American occupiers with a very, very thin “Iraqi” facade. Any resemblance to judicial objectivity or fairness – or legal legitimacy – is strictly accidently.
Shirin,
Let us not forget that Michael Scharf’s function as a “trainer” for the judges,
Yes Shirin all those trainers and expertises who went to Iraq to do “Nation Building” like the International law professor Michael Scharf, co-founder of Case Western’s Public International Law and Policy Group, nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for work in the prosecution of major war criminals, such as Slobodan Milosevic, Charles Taylor, and Saddam Hussein.
It takes Human Right years from 1979-1991 to recognise that Saddam regime is brutal regimes when all Iraqi knew him before he jumped to the power he is a criminal and he lead a group of assassins killing and torturing many Iraqis early days after 1968.
So after training those Iraqi judges by the International law professor Michael Scharf we ending in a very poor and funny Tribunal running the “trial of the century”.
The question is it the Tribunal/ Judges fault or the training given by International law professor Michael Scharf,?
First I doubt is the US/British team trained judges fault because simply those trainee finished their training course then it’s the trainer fault who decided to they pass the tarining system/course setup.
That system setup by
The fact is
”
With this money and training machinery its looking very disturbing why all that money spent? What the tribunal Machinery skills those Iraqi Judges got? Why the poorly and un skilled unorganised show we saw in the court? Is deliberate US/UK show or its personal show?
Bust we still hear and read and officially stated in the US/UK media that this is Iraqi process as
This bring our attention to the point of wonder
http://hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/iraq0206/
“It makes you wonder what would have happened if the Americans had been able to organise Saddam’s assassination prior to the war, or if they had managed to kill him in the many targeted attempts at the beginning of the war. Would Iraq be forever unable to emerge from his malign shadow?
Okaaaaay – it seems the comment page is acting badly again. I will give it another try:
“It makes you wonder what would have happened if the Americans had been able to organise Saddam’s assassination prior to the war, or if they had managed to kill him in the many targeted attempts at the beginning of the war. Would Iraq be forever unable to emerge from his malign shadow?“
Well, exactly!
Those who are prattling on and on that “Until the fate of Iraq’s former dictator is resolved, it is hard to see how the country will be able to leave its past behind” are clearly unaware that for most Iraqis Saddam became history nearly three years ago. Now the “malign shadow” they will struggle to emerge from for the next several generations will be that of the far more devastating Bush war regime.
PS It WAS nice of the Americans, though, to try to help them “move on” by dictating that they redesign their school curricula and rewrite their textbooks, and that they leave out large swaths of Iraq’s modern history in the process.
“Saddam’s trial may simply excite and encourage Iraq’s Sunni population.”
I don’t know who said this, but why on earth would it have the effect of “exciting and encouraging” the “Sunni population”? That makes no sense at all – unless, of course, one makes the ignorant and assanine assumption that “Iraq’s Sunni population” – including the propagandistically misnamed “insurgency” – support Saddam Hussein. And of course, THAT necessitates that one accept the equally ignorant and assanine nonsense that “Iraq’s Sunni population” all experienced great power and privilege and wonderful things under Saddam and oppose the American invasion, occupation, and attempted transformation of their country because they see themselves losing all that power, privilege, wa fulan wa fulan wa fulan.
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