CAIRO, 20 December 2003 — In a rare lengthy press conference during which US President Bush restrained his jubilance over the capture of Saddam Hussein, he put out a clear message when asked whether the former Iraqi dictator should receive the death penalty.
“I have my personal views. And this is a brutal dictator. He is a person who killed a lot of people,” Bush said.
He refused to elaborate further but in any event such clarification was unnecessary since we know that during the US president’s tenure as governor of Texas there were more executions than ever before along with a glaring absence of pardons.
George W. Bush also refused to confirm that the Iraqis would be in charge of trying Saddam for his crimes, suggesting only that they would be involved in the process. Since the US does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Court there is only one interpretation that can be drawn — the US will supervise bringing Saddam to “justice” together with the Iraqi National Congress appointed by it.
If this is, indeed, the case, then surely Bush’s remarks are prejudicial to Saddam’s trial. Here is the self-styled leader of the free world hinting that he would like to see his old foe — and the man who allegedly attempted to assassinate his father — receive the death penalty. There will be those among the judiciary, whether American or Iraqi, who might be influenced to give Bush his most fervent wish.
Further, there is nobody in the Iraqi council who has any sympathy for Saddam. There are Shiites, whose people were massacred by Saddam’s forces during the post-Gulf War period when Bush Senior incited a Shiite uprising, among its members. There are Kurds, whose people were gassed by Saddam in Halabja. There are exiles, which had previously been jailed and tortured under Saddam’s tenure while others have been fighting an ideological war against the former Iraqi leader while overseas. And there is Pentagon darling Ahmed Chalabi, who speaks with the most authoritative voice. Who, among these can guarantee a fair and just trial for Saddam?
The occupying forces have already breached Saddam’s rights as a prisoner of war, when his tonsils were shown on television and his hair searched for lice. According to the Americans themselves, the humiliating public display of POWs is a breach of the Geneva Conventions. They were previously condemned for showing the bruised and bloated corpses of Saddam’s sons after they had strongly warned the Iraqis not to parade the bodies of dead American soldiers.
There are few in the Arab world, which have any love for Saddam the person. His crimes are legendary and we know that hundreds of thousands of his own people suffered death and torture at his hands. Yet, there should be respect due, if not for the man, for the office. He was an Arab leader and one that was for decades recognized and even befriended by the US. In fact, many would say he was a creation of a CIA-inspired coup.
Arabs can therefore be forgiven if their joy at Saddam’s capture is tempered by a feeling that not only Saddam has been insulted and diminished, so has the entire Muslim world. Other barbaric dictators have come and gone but few have been subjected to such demeaning public treatment as Saddam Hussein.
Former leader of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic has been facing justice in The Hague for years but we have never had close-ups of his medical examinations flashed across our screens.
Arabs are frustrated by what they term America’s double standards and many believe rightly or wrongly that Arabs are being victimized by the Bush administration. Now is the time for the US to show that this isn’t the case.
And what better way than to hand Saddam to the United Nations to undergo trial in Baghdad with impartial Iraqi judges and a jury selected by a process, which would weed out any kind of bias?
Comments from members of the Iraqi Interim Council who talked with Saddam after his capture and from the American president himself have illustrated that neither the Iraqi National Congress nor George W. Bush are fit to take charge of the deliverance of true justice to Saddam. If Saddam is destined to face a kangaroo court, then the future of democracy in Iraq along with the much-vaunted Western “values” promoted by the coalition looks bleak.
— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Mideast affairs and can be contacted at [email protected]
