Unfortunately, like so much else the Americans have tried in Iraq, the trial of Saddam Hussein and his principal henchmen has become a shambles. Following two hours of political bluster after the fallen dictator finally took the witness box yesterday, it became clear that his defense for 148 deaths in Dujail was that the deaths followed the trials of villagers implicated in the attempt on his life when he visited the area. In taking this line, he is trying to put the whole Iraqi judiciary in the dock, a judiciary from among whom his present judges have been drawn.
These deaths were clearly chosen by the Iraqi authorities and their US advisers because they seemed to represent an open-and-shut case of the terror, only occasionally dressed up in quasi-judicial garb, with which Saddam’s brutal Baathist regime ruled the country. The incident was also important because it was one in which the Shiite majority had been the victims.
Evidence for other crimes, such as the widespread butchery among Shiite communities in the south following the abortive uprising after Saddam’s troops were driven from Kuwait in 1991, obviously seemed more difficult to link directly to Saddam himself, whereas his signature was on the death warrants for the Dujail victims. Saddam does not dispute this (though some co-defendants are claiming their own signatures were forged). Part of his defense is to ask what regime would not execute those attempting to assassinate its head.
The prosecution ought to be on firmer ground with the new charges announced Monday relating to the 1982 Operation Anfal massacres of rebellious Kurds. This which included the notorious use of chemical weapons against the unfortunate population of Halabja. But even here, the paper trail of evidence may not lead directly to Saddam but rather stop with Ali Hassan Al-Majid, Saddam’s cousin, who ran the Anfal operation and as a result earned the sinister nickname, “Chemical Ali.”
Yet in one key respect, Saddam has already acknowledged guilt. Early in his trial after recovering his composure, he struck a heroic pose and said that he and he alone, as — in his opinion — the still legitimate ruler of Iraq, was responsible for everything that had happened.
No one, even among the Sunni community, who endured the fearful tensions of living in a state where life and death were often a matter of the arbitrary exercise of the total power of Saddam and his inner circle, doubts the former president’s guilt. The point of this and future trials, was to demonstrate to Iraqis and the entire world, the full extent of the enormities that the regime had perpetrated. Originally there was talk of “closure”, even of “truth and reconciliation” on the South African model; however, as the trial drags on, with the defendants’ political outbursts being censored by the simple expedient of turning off the video feed from the court room, the process is proving far from satisfactory. Perhaps it would have been better for the trial to be held at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, something which the Americans rejected since they themselves refuse to allow their own citizens to be subject to that court’s jurisdiction.
