KUWAIT CITY, 12 May 2004 — Saddam Hussein and some 100 former members of his Baathist regime detained by the US-led coalition in Iraq will be handed over to Iraqis before the June 30 power transfer, the head of the Iraqi war crimes tribunal said here yesterday.
“We have a hundred detainees (who were) senior leaders of the former regime, including Saddam Hussein, Tareq Aziz and Ali Hasan Al-Majid,” lawyer Salam Chalabi, the tribunal’s director general, said on arrival at Kuwait airport.
“They will be handed over to Iraqis before the transfer of power on June 30. Their trial will commence in early 2005,” said Chalabi, who is in Kuwait to gather evidence to be used in the trials of Saddam and former senior Baathist officials.
The Iraqi law official arrived here from Iran where he was also on a fact-finding mission to gather evidence against top aides of the former Iraqi dictator.
Chalabi said complete indictments against former officials will be referred to judicial authorities by the end of this year, adding that sentences “could extend to capital punishment”.
“We have plenty of evidence but the problem is organizing it ... We believe we will find more evidence in Kuwait to convict Saddam and his officials,” Chalabi said.
Kuwaiti Justice Minister Ahmad Baqer said in January that 178 major indictments had been prepared against Saddam Hussein and his top aides for war crimes committed during Iraq’s 1990-1991 occupation of the emirate.
Baqer said he expected the indictments to reach 200 and they would be presented to the Iraqi authorities. The indictments were prepared by a special committee formed some 10 years ago and chaired by the public prosecutor.
The committee has already been in contact with the Iraqi war crimes tribunal, according to Baqer. Saddam, captured by the US-led coalition on Dec. 13, ordered his army to invade Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, occupying it for seven months before being driven out by a US-led multinational coalition.
Kuwait charges Iraqi troops committed numerous war crimes during the invasion, including the killing of at least 1,000 civilians, detaining thousands of prisoners, perpetrating widescale torture and confiscating property.
Meanwhile, a UN delegation is expected to visit Baghdad soon to complete its investigation into alleged corruption over the oil-for-food program during the Saddam Hussein regime, interim Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Al-Ulum said in Baghdad yesterday.
The program, which ran from December 1996 until November 2003, supervised oil sales by Saddam’s regime to pay for humanitarian supplies to offset international sanctions. But a Baghdad newspaper in January published the names of more than 200 people it said had appeared on an Iraqi Oil Ministry list as having received payoffs from the regime.
