Saddam Hussein’s rights have been ”violated” in the legal process following his capture, one of his top United States lawyers said on Tuesday on the eve of the deposed Iraqi leader’s trial opening on charges of ordering the massacre of 143 countrymen two decades ago.
Ex-US attorney-general Ramsey Clark also cited reports by international human rights groups, like the US-based Human Rights Watch and the Britain-based Amnesty International, which questioned if Saddam will receive a fair trial.
”Among the fundamental human rights that have been violated for almost two years are right to equality of arms, to a lawyer of his own choosing, access to facilities to prepare his defence, and access to a proper constituted court to challenge,” according to a written statement issued by Clark, one of nearly a dozen international lawyers on Saddam’s defence team.
”These rights are enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that has been ratified by Iraq and the United States,” he added.
Saddam and his co-defendants will stand trial on Wednesday before the Iraqi Special Tribunal for allegedly ordering the 1982 massacre in Dujail, a predominantly Shi’ite Muslim town north of the Iraqi capital, after a failed assassination attempt against the toppled president.
The defendants face the death penalty if convicted, but have the right to appeal.
The trial is expected to be the first of about a dozen involving crimes against humanity committed by Saddam and his regime’s henchmen during his 23-year rule.
These include the 1988 gassing of up to 5 000 Kurds in Halabja and the bloody 1991 suppression of a Shi’ite uprising in the south after a US-led coalition drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.
Clark referred to a Human Rights Watch report, which said the Iraqi Special Tribunal ”runs the risk of violating international standards for fair trials”.
Amnesty also said earlier this year that the tribunal’s statutes are ”not consistent with international law”.
Clark served as attorney general under the late US President Lyndon Johnson for three years in the 1960s. He is a staunch anti-war opponent who has met Saddam several times during the last 15 years. He was considered a friend of Iraq under Saddam when the United Nations imposed sanctions on Baghdad following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
‘I want to kill Saddam’
Among Iraqis who have fled to Jordan, and across the Arab world, people are eyeing the start of Hussein’s trial with hope in some cases, trepidation in others — and sometimes with outright anger.
”How can Saddam get a fair trial when there’s no government in Iraq? How can they try him?” asked Ismail Makki, a poor Shi’ite from the southern Iraqi port city of Basra, as he hawked fruits and vegetable in Amman’s bustling downtown marketplace.
”There’s no water, electricity, or security,” he yelled. ”If he stayed in power, it would be better for us.”
At the same marketplace, Iraqi chemist Taher Al-Sahab also defended Saddam.
”He is not guilty,” said the Shi’ite from Karbala, one of his sect’s holiest cities. ”He won’t get a fair trial in Iraq.”
Asked about Saddam’s alleged massacre of thousands of his countrymen during his 23-year rule, Al-Sahab said tartly: ”Now, more Shi’ites are being killed in suicide bombings.”
Others, however, are happy about what they view as a chance for retribution.
Nura, a 17-year-old Shi’ite girl from Baghdad, strolling with her mother in a fancy mall in Amman where many affluent Iraqi exiles go, said she wants Saddam to die for his crimes.
”I want to kill Saddam, all the people want that,” she growled, refusing to give her full name in case of punishment for relatives still in Iraq.
”The Iraqi people are destroyed because of him,” she said, her dark eyes flashing.
Across the Arab world — not just in the Iraqi exile community — emotions are mixed about a former leader who some viewed as a source of Arab pride, but others considered a tyrant who oppressed his own people and fought against Iran and Kuwait.
Badr al-Shatti, a 40-year-old civil servant from Kuwait, which Saddam invaded and occupied for seven months in the early 1990s, said a trial was too good for Saddam.
”He should have dangled from a noose, his head should have been decapitated, or he should have been shot,” Al-Shatti said.
Mainstream media and pan-Arab satellite television stations like al-Jazeera have devoted considerable time to explorations of the charges and the trial. Al-Jazeera has shown footage of atrocities from Saddam’s regime.
Extremist websites have been mostly silent on the issue. But Saddam’s Baath party issued a statement, published on Tuesday in the London-based Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, claiming the trial was illegimitate and urging insurgents to use its start to step up killing of ”occupation soldiers.”
The statement’s authenticity could not be independently confirmed.
Feelings are perhaps the strongest among Iraqi exiles.
One Iraqi exile in Sharjah, the United Arab Emirates, described the proceedings as a US public relations bid to prop up its failing project in Iraq.
”This is just a show to distract the Iraqi people. What Iraqis need is security now, not security 20 years ago,” said the exile, Saadallah al-Fathi, a former Opec official who once worked as an adviser to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.
”My family is suffering there. Who cares about the trial of Saddam?”
His anger is deep about his country’s situation.
”We were told that as soon as the United States invaded, everything would be fine. Well, it wasn’t fine. We were told things would get better once they captured Saddam. Then things got 10 times worse. They told us when we get a government, Iraq will be like California. Nothing could be further from reality,” he said bitterly. – Sapa-AP