Saddam Hussein and his key lieutenants are to face a new war crimes court, one of the parties in Iraq’s new power-sharing council announced yesterday.
As Britain and the US embarked on a major offensive to show that normal life is returning to the country, the Iraqi National Congress announced that a new judicial high commission would try war criminals.
Entifadh Qanbar, spokesperson for the former opposition party, said: ”The governing council will take it upon itself to try them and to punish them according to law. That includes Saddam Hussein, the biggest criminal.”
The commission is to be chaired by judge Dara Nor al Din, a member of Iraq’s new governing council, who was jailed for two years by the Saddam regime for declaring one of his edicts unconstitutional.
Britain and the US believe that the new commission is a sign of how authority is being established in Iraq after the setting up of the 25-member cross-party council on Sunday. Britain and the US attempted yesterday to reject any impression of anarchy in Iraq by holding simultaneous briefings describing how normal life is slowly returning to Iraq.
In an upbeat assessment John Sawers, Britain’s most senior representative in Iraq, voiced the hope that elections could be held as early as next year to establish a full sovereign government in Iraq. The establishment of the new council is to be followed by a special conference to agree a new constitution which would pave the way for elections.
”It should be possible to do [the elections] in 2004,” Sawers said. ”But that depends on the progress on the Iraqi side drawing up the new constitution.”
Sawers also rejected suggestions in the British media that Britain and the US had set up a puppet government. ”If it was a hand-picked American council I do not think you would have found the secretary general of the communist party, or the leader of Iraqi Hizbullah, or the leader of the supreme council for the Islamic revolution in Iraq on the council. The fact is they are on the council because they are significant political figures.”
The council has the right to nominate ministers, change laws, help appoint a committee to draft a new constitution and prepare for free elections. But the final say remains in the hands of the provisional authority chief, Paul Bremer.
Sawers’s remarks were echoed by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, in his report on the current state of Iraq. He cited the reopening of police stations and courts, along with all 240 hospitals and 98% of Iraq’s schools. Food aid has been extended to the Marsh Arabs, but because of the sabotage of electricity and oil supplies by Ba’athists, he claimed, Baghdad is still only getting 70%-90% of its prewar water supply. – Guardian Unlimited Â