BAGHDAD, 9 May 2003 — A special Iraqi tribunal could try Saddam Hussein and members of his former regime for crimes against his people, a top US law official said yesterday as Iraq’s legal system resumed work with the opening of two courts in Baghdad. “There is a broad consensus that crimes against the Iraqi people be handled by Iraqi justice,” said the new senior US adviser to Iraq’s Justice Ministry, Clint Williamson. “We think the Iraqis should have the lead on that,” Williamson said of the prosecution of the 55 top Iraqi officials on Washington’s most-wanted list, headed by Saddam.
Saddam, whose regime was toppled a month ago by a US-led military coalition, is still at large, and it is uncertain whether he is dead or alive. So far some 20 former officials have been captured by or surrendered to coalition forces. “Prosecution involving crimes on a large scale will immobilize the system for years. So we need to set up some sort of special arrangements to deal with it,” said Williamson. “It has to be clarified and the details have to be determined, but it will probably take place within the broad premises of the Iraqi justice.”
Williamson was talking after the resumption of legal proceedings in the criminal court in the northwestern Baghdad district of Al-Azamiya. A court in Baghdad’s Al-Bayaa district also opened under the supervision of Iraqi judges. Invited by the US Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid, journalists crammed into the dilapidated courthouse in Al-Azamiya. In a well-orchestrated show for the media, US soldiers pulled down a photo of Saddam Hussein over the main entrance.
While the stairwells were washed clean, the courthouse’s smashed windows and doors were testament to the widespread destruction from looting that followed Saddam’s fall from power. Anticipating the ransacking of the building, neighbors managed to move most of the furniture out until order was restored and work recommenced.
Around 20 workers were back at their desks yesterday, unsure about the future. “We get no salary. I have five children and my husband, a soldier, is in the house,” said Eqbal Osman Mohammed. Williamson said the reopening of the court marked an important day in restoring the normal functioning of civil society. “In a week or two, we will be sending assessment teams to all regions of the country” to get the legal system up and running again, Williamson said. “The basic law is the same, the 1969 criminal law,” he said.
“Since 1969, a number of amendments were made. They’re inconsistent with international standards like the Geneva and the Hague conventions. Those will be suspended,” such as the law banning the insulting of the president. “The law was a good system, but the manner in which it was applied was wrong.” However, Iraqi Judge Ibrahim Malik Al-Hindawi said the 1969 law would be applied without amendment because “legislative power is the sole way of introducing such amendments and we will therefore wait for a new power to be put in place” before changing the law.
Iraqi judges “refuse the interference of any party in their work,” he said in reference to coalition forces, adding that “any foreigner who commits an act against Iraqi law will be judged conforming to Iraqi law.” Asked about the chances of trying former Iraqi officials in local courts, Hindawi said “Iraqi law is applicable to all Iraqis, whatever their position.” Nine Iraqis, arrested by US forces or Iraqi police and accused of either robbery, arson or murder, arrived by horn-blaring bus to appear in the crowded Al-Azamiya courtroom.
Meanwhile, in the Iraqi city of Falluja, women dress in long black shawls and sit in the back room of their homes to hide from what they say are the “half-naked” US soldiers spying on them with X-ray vision goggles.
In the southern city of Kut, residents throw stones at US troops, believing they steal medicine and crates of coke and burn the Iraqi national flag. And banners across the country say the occupiers only want Iraq’s oil, despite American assurances that “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was designed to rid them of an evil dictator.
In postwar Iraq, false rumors and perceptions worlds apart fill the communications void between Iraqis and Americans — already divided by cultural, language and religious barriers.
