There is no one to judge Saddam

The Tribunal shuffles its chairmen

Yesterday's eighth hearing of the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven of his associates was postponed until Sunday due to the "non-appearance of witnesses." The head of the legal team, Khalil al-Duleimi, called this explanation “a cover for the chaos reigning in the court and the manipulation of politicians with the tribunal, funded by the Americans.” Indeed, on the eve of the meeting, a representative of the tribunal boldly asserted that the process would go “uninterruptedly”, and the verdict would be handed down “in two months at most.”

In fact, the troubles at the tribunal began on January 15th. Then Chief Judge Rizgar Amin accused the Iraqi authorities and certain “Shiite politicians” of putting pressure on him and announced his “irrevocable resignation.” 48-year-old Kurdish Amin cited claims from Iraqi and US media that he was deliberately delaying the process and being too lenient towards the defendants. As a professional lawyer and an extremely sensitive person, he really did not humiliate the dignity of the defendants, patiently listening to all their statements and complaints.

According to the tribunal's charter, yesterday's meeting was to be chaired by the oldest judge, 62-year-old Shiite Said al-Hammashi. However, on January 18, the government commission to liquidate the Baath Party that ruled Iraq reported that he was a member of Saddam’s party (al-Hammashi denies this) and therefore cannot be the chief judge. On Monday, the tribunal elected as its chairman a member of the panel of the Supreme Criminal Court, 64-year-old Kurdish Raouf Rashid Abdel Rahman. He comes from the Kurdish city of Halabja, where the Hussein regime poisoned five thousand residents to death with mustard gas in 1988. Rahman never started a new job, and Iraqi Kurdish President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari have not yet approved the resignation of Rizgar Amin.

“Saddam for the Kurds is the personification of the policy of genocide carried out against them by the Baathist regime. Now they want to deal with this evil,” Olga Zhigalina, head of the sector of Kurdish studies and regional problems at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Vremya Novostey. In her opinion, “President Talabani encourages the trial of Saddam to be in the hands of the Kurds.” In addition, “the coalition forces in Iraq rely mainly on the Kurds, and therefore will promote “their man.” However, Olga Zhigalina noted, the Arabs of Iraq also suffered from repression.

The 68-year-old main defendant could be executed if he is found to be involved in the 1982 killing of 148 residents of the Shiite village of Dujail after an assassination attempt on Saddam there. However, at the previous seven hearings, held on October 19, November 29, December 5-7 and December 21-22, 2005, witnesses from among ordinary peasants were unable to provide the court with evidence that it was the defendants who ordered the execution of their fellow villagers. Al-Duleimi's lawyer recently said that he visited Saddam in prison to develop a “defense strategy.” He said that his client “is constantly busy, reading the Koran, fiction,” and for the New Year he wrote a new volume of stories and poems. The ex-president, according to the lawyer, was keenly interested in Western pressure on Iran and Syria. These themes are likely to appear in Saddam's upcoming statements from the dock.

Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN