Saddam Hussein will be handed over to the Iraqis before the transfer of power at the end of June, the lawyer preparing the former dictator’s trial said on Tuesday.
Iraqis will also be given custody of more than 100 other top-level former regime officials, including Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s deputy prime minister, and Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as ”Chemical Ali”, who led horrific gas attacks against the Kurds in the 1980s.
The trials will begin early next year, said Salem Chalabi, the Iraqi lawyer who runs the special tribunal that will hear the cases. But Saddam’s trial is unlikely to be among the first hearings, he said.
The suspects would face the death penalty if convicted, said Chalabi, who is a nephew of the controversial, Pentagon-backed exile, Ahmad Chalabi. He added: ”The punishments against those criminals will include executions. The coalition forces now have more than 100 detained former regime officials. They will be transferred to us before the transfer of power. They include Saddam, Ali Hassan al-Majid and Tariq Aziz.”
It is unclear where an Iraqi government could safely hold so many high-level suspects inside the country without US military support.
The US has refused to disclose where it is holding Saddam. At first it was thought that he and others were being held at Baghdad airport, which is now a US military base. Officials from the Red Cross and members of Iraq’s governing council have seen the former dictator in jail. But some reports have suggested that the US moved him out of Iraq several months ago to a military base elsewhere.
Chalabi (41) was in Kuwait on Tuesday to collect evidence for the trials. He has lived outside Iraq for many years and worked as a lawyer specialising in capital markets in London before he returned last year.
In an interview with The Guardian earlier this year he said logistical hurdles and frustrations over obtaining evidence meant that Saddam was unlikely to appear before a court for at least two years.
The first cases likely to be heard will be those of high-ranking Ba’athist officials.
The prosecutors are likely to focus on a dozen or so of the most heinous cases, including Chemical Ali’s Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s, the crushing of the 1991 uprising, ethnic cleansing and the persecution of the Shias.
Only after several of these cases have been won will Saddam appear in court.
Unlike the international courts set up in the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, the tribunal will be run by Iraqis. It will have the power to investigate and try only cases of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and three crimes particular to Iraq: manipulating the judiciary, squandering public assets and starting a war against another Arab country.
Each trial will have five judges to hear the cases in courts set up in Baghdad’s Clocktower Museum, which Saddam once used to house the thousands of official gifts he had been given by visiting heads of state. – Guardian Unlimited Â