LONDON, 6 November 2006 — The trial that sentenced Saddam Hussein to hang was flawed and may fail to persuade Iraqis that justice has been done, rights groups and legal experts said yesterday.
Rights groups said the year-long trial — during the course of which three defense lawyers were murdered and the original judge quit citing political interference — did not meet the standards that would allow it to settle the question.
“The court was not impartial. There were not adequate steps taken to protect the security of defense lawyers and witnesses,” said Malcolm Smart, head of the Middle East and North Africa Program for Amnesty International.
“Every individual has a right to a fair trial, even people accused of crimes of the magnitude that Saddam Hussein was accused of, and this has not been a fair trial.”
US officials say the trial met Iraqi legal standards, and that defense lawyers who were killed had been offered better security, but turned it down.
The New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice, which has monitored the Dujail trial closely with staff in Baghdad, said appeals judges should consider ordering a re-trial to fix its flaws.
“It’s not a sham trial by any means. But there were lots of errors and mistakes along the way, as they were learning,” said Hanny Megally, the ICTJ’s expert on justice in the Middle East. “And in all fairness, unless they put those right, it would be impossible to meet the standards of fairness.”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbor, who opposes the death penalty in all cases, said Iraq should guarantee fair appeals, and should not carry out executions. “Those convicted today should have every opportunity to exhaust their appellate remedies in a fair way, and whatever the outcome of an appeal, I hope the government will observe a moratorium on executions,” she said in a statement.
Human Rights Watch slammed the trial and sentencing of the accused as a failure to establish the facts and, as a result, a loss for the victims.
The trial “was a failure to establish an indisputable record of the facts and a sense of responsibility for what happened,” HRW’s director for international justice Richard Dicker said. “It was a lost opportunity to give a sense of the rule of law and a loss for the victims in that the trial and verdict are unlikely to stand the test of time,” he said.
