IT says a lot about Saddam Hussein’s record that even while he is on trial for the first of a series of terrible crimes, virtually everyone believes that he is guilty. The whole point of the judicial process is to show just how and why he was guilty while allowing him the opportunity to disprove the allegations, if he can. This is justice, a concept which is probably, even now, alien to the former dictator as we see him protesting and blustering before the court.
It is only through the working of justice that the rule of law in the new Iraq can be established and a stable future ensured. This is why the murder of Saadoun Janabi, a lawyer for one of Saddam’s fellow defendants, is so disturbing. It is a clear attempt to pervert the course of justice by terrorizing other court officers as well as witnesses before this trial even gets properly under way. It appears that while prosecutors and judges, some of whom have chosen to remain anonymous, are under heavy guard, there was no protection for defense lawyers nor, it is alleged, for defense witnesses.
If, as was assumed initially, Janabi’s killers were acting out of revenge and hatred for Saddam’s regime, the crime was both stupid and counterproductive. Using the same brutal methods on Saddam and his people as they employed on unfortunate Iraqis during their vicious reign is no answer at all. It impugns the justice of the trial and turns the victimizers into victims. It also allows Saddam and his cohorts to protest that they cannot expect to receive a fair trial and also characterize the proceedings as a kangaroo court, in which defense teams are murdered and intimidated. What the eyewitnesses had to say about the kidnapping lends weight to the charges. The heavily armed men who burst into Janabi’s office and dragged him into a car were in suits and ties and said that they were from the Interior Ministry. In the present-day Iraq, murder comes easy not only to Saddam’s henchmen, but also to those who hate him — and many of them are in the government.
There is another, more sinister, possibility also. Could Janabi’s killers have been Sunni insurgents or their Al-Qaeda allies? That would serve their goals. They can use the murder of a member of the defense team to prove to the Sunnis that they cannot expect justice from the present system.
In the final analysis, it does not matter who was responsible for this crime. What is of importance is that the authorities leave no stone unturned in their search for the criminals. The slaying of Janabi is not simply one more death in the miserable litany of violence since the US-led invasion. It is one of the most significant and outrageous among many. This is because it represents an attack upon everything for which the new Iraq stands. If Janabi’s killers go undetected and unpunished, it will demonstrate that a future pluralist Iraq in which justice and the rule of law are paramount, is in jeopardy. All Iraqis must come together to run these murderers down, whoever they are and whatever their perverse motives. Janabi’s murder was an attack on all their futures.
