As the stormy trial of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein reaches its halfway point, the nature of the prosecution case is finally beginning to emerge, but grave concerns over the court’s procedure and impartiality remain.
The court adjourned on Wednesday for three weeks while the three-judge panel reexamines the evidence and drafts specific charges against the eight co-defendants over the massacre of 148 Shi’ites from the village of Dujail in the 1980s.
The first 17 sessions of the trial have seen defendants and their lawyers boycotting sessions, lawyers assassinated, judges resigning and repeated grandstanding by Saddam and other former regime officials in the dock.
However, the last few hearings have also seen the presentation of documents directly linking defendants to the events in Dujail, where Saddam escaped an attempt on his life in 1982.
Saddam and his seven co-defendants went on trial in October on charges of crimes against humanity including murder and torture and face the death penalty if convicted. They have all pleaded not guilty.
”What’s been important about the last couple of sessions in March is that there has been no major crisis, which is a change,” said Miranda Sissons, a senior associate with the International Centre for Transitional Justice observing the trial. ”It is beginning to look like a legal process.”
”But there are substantive legal concerns,” she added, pointing to questions of procedure and the combative relationship between the court and defence lawyers.
The defence team has repeatedly denounced the court as unfair and illegitimate and foreign experts have called for a UN-sponsored trial, while many Iraqis have expressed impatience with the length of the proceedings.
The halfway point comes as the United States-led coalition marks the third anniversary of its invasion of Iraq, a country that remains in shambles and teeters on the brink of open sectarian war.
In the last session, Saddam eschewed the opportunity to defend himself and instead urged the Iraqi people to unite against the occupation instead of fighting amongst themselves.
”He doesn’t believe it is a real trial, he thinks he still has the support of the vast majority of Iraqi people,” said Hassan Bazzaz, a professor of political science at Baghdad University.
Saddam’s comments are an effort to bolster his standing among Iraqis in the hope it will affect the outcome of the trial, he said.
”He acts like he is still president and thinks he still has a responsibility for his people.”
Following months of emotional, though often rambling and contradictory evidence from victims of the Dujail events, the last month saw the submission of concrete documentary evidence that legal experts say is the key to the trial.
”These kinds of trials are generally trial by documents, especially as you go up the chain of command,” said Nehal Bhuta, who is following the trial for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Documents are needed to link high-level defendants with executions and torture that they generally didn’t carry out with their own hands and such evidence has finally made an appearance during the last few hearings.
But observers say the learning curve for the Iraqi High Tribunal remains steep and there are serious problems in a number of areas.
”What we don’t have is the expert testimony that lets us understand how the case has been put together,” noted Sissons.
For instance, Awad Bandar, the former chief judge of the revolutionary court that sentenced 148 Dujail villagers to death, claimed in his defence that he was only carrying out the law.
”The gap in the prosecution’s case is establishing that Awad had the same criminal intent on the attack on Dujail,” said Bhuta. The court has to show that ”he, as an individual, was acting as an extension of the will of the president at that time.”
Expert testimony would give the necessary context much as it did at Nuremberg when Nazi leaders were held accountable for their actions during Hitler’s dictatorship.
Court sessions also continue to be characterised by hostile relations between the defence lawyers, who have walked out several times, and chief judge Rauf Abdel Rahman who they claim is biased.
”How can he appear impartial when he has all these reasons to be full of hatred,” former US attorney general Ramsey Clark of Saddam’s defence team told CNN.
The judge was born in Halabja, the site of the gassing of 5 000 Kurds by Saddam’s regime in 1988. However, a defence motion to disqualify the judge was tossed out.
Among Iraqis, Shi’ites and Kurds want the trial dispensed with and Saddam hanged, while Sunnis see the whole process as a sham.
”This is without a doubt the fairest trial in Iraq today,” maintains Bhuta, contrasting it to the trials of alleged insurgents currently under way in the the Central Criminal Court.
But on whether the court can overcome its administrative and procedural flaws, he said: ”On that issue the jury is still out.” – AFP
