No easy thing, to try a mass-murderer
The trial of Saddam Hussein is without precedent in the Arab world. Rulers there remain in power until their natural death or their murder by a successor. In Iraq in living memory, the king and his family and his prime minister were trampled until their corpses were unrecognizable. Two of the nationalists who then seized power were themselves violently overthrown. Fear that this would be his own fate drove Saddam to many of his crimes. Baghdad is without a settled government for the time being, and mayhem on the street is not yet checked. But however fraught the context, Iraqis and people throughout the Middle East are taking note on their TV screens of each and every stage in the establishment of the rule of law. In that sense, Saddam's is indeed a show trial.
From the moment of his capture in December 2003, he was obviously going to provide a field day for the swarm of legalists and busybodies who have no responsibility but plenty of objections and fantasies about the nature of the world. Sure enough, the likes of Amnesty International, Ramsey Clark, and every other self-important leftist are agog to accuse the United States of imposing victor's justice. But there was never any question of trying Saddam outside Iraq. Iraqis had the will and the capabilities to hold the trial, and they set up a tribunal for this purpose.
As was only to be expected, Baathist brutality immediately joined hands with legalism in the attempt to compromise proceedings against Saddam. One of the five judges along with several members of the tribunal staff was murdered. Unseen hands have also shot dead two of the defense lawyers, and a third fled the country. Lawyers for Saddam are meanwhile practicing the usual tricks of the trade. The tribunal, they claim, has no legitimacy; they have not had enough time to prepare; and they will summon American presidents to show "U.S. complicity" with Saddam's crimes. They'll summon British prime ministers, too!
Other landmark cases are open to comparable legalistic objections. At Nuremberg, one of the Allied judges was a Soviet apparatchik involved in Stalinist crime at least the equivalent of Nazi crime. When the octogenarian Marshal P้tain was tried for treason as a collaborator with Hitler, his lawyers wanted the trial to be declared invalid on account of his age and poor memory. The Israelis infringed international law in kidnapping Adolf Eichmann in order to bring him to court. Milosevic sounds like Saddam, saying that his own court the international tribunal at The Hague has no legitimacy to try him. The special features of such cases prove only how elusive natural justice is.
In the dock with Saddam are his half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, formerly head of the intelligence apparatus; Taha Yassin Ramadan, Saddam's vice president; and five other defendants. Trying them was Rizgar Muhammad Amin, the presiding judge on a panel of five. A soft-spoken Kurd, he addressed Saddam as mister. Naturally interpreting politeness as weakness, Saddam began to bluster that he was president of Iraq, he would boycott the court, he would not submit to handcuffs, blah, blah, blah. When guards escorted him by the arm, he played angry. His whole body, he said, displayed signs of abuse by his American gaolers.
In the courtroom duel between them, Judge Amin had the upper hand: He gave Saddam scope to show himself a bully, a coward, and a liar. On account of the legalisms, however, the trial has gone into a series of recesses, and just as it was about to restart in January, Judge Amin resigned, complaining, "I can't stand anymore the criticisms I get from the street or from TV. This is my fault, and I feel sad because of it all, so my duty is to resign." Who knows what pressures, what threats, he was under? One possible successor turned out to be an ex-Baathist. The chief judge now, Raouf Rashid Abdel-Rahman, is another Kurd, as it happens from Halabja, where in 1988 Saddam ordered the gassing of 5,000 people.
As the defense intended, the legalisms and ensuing recesses have thrown shadows of uncertainty over the trial. So far, the court has dealt only with the atrocity that occurred in 1982 at the village of Dujail, which is a microcosm of Saddam's tyranny. He and a convoy were driving through when gunmen opened fire on them. In reprisal, some 400 villagers were arrested, and about 150 of them put to death. Witnesses have given evidence that whole families were rounded up and tortured, and that the men among them were never seen again. Listening to the recital of facts, Saddam at one point told the judge to "go to hell." During another session, a witness from Dujail testified that while he was being tortured, Barzan Ibrahim was present, sitting and eating grapes. Now it was Barzan's turn to begin shouting.
Playing to the gallery in the hope of creating an impression that the trial is unfair has become the defense strategy. Barzan Ibrahim has tested the authority of Judge Abdel-Rahman by cursing the court as "the daughter of a whore." Saddam, in turn, shouted "Down with traitors" and "Down with America." Not intimidated, the judge brought these disruptions to a close by having Saddam and Barzan, with their attorneys, removed from the courtroom. "You want to leave?" he said. "The court ejects you." The trial then proceeded in their absence, with court-appointed attorneys substituting, until the judge ordered another recess.
Media reports were almost unanimous that this was chaos, a shambles, or a "Soviet-style travesty of justice," as one official newspaper put it in Tehran, of all places to be worrying about legal niceties. Public opinion in Iraq, however, tends to be impressed by the grip of the judge. The authorities expect the trial to end in the course of the year, but this may be wishful thinking.
Crime on a totalitarian scale implicating a whole society is notoriously hard to pin down in court, as was seen in Germany. A book just published in Paris, Le Livre Noir de Saddam Hussein, shows how small a space the Dujail atrocity occupies in the spectrum of Saddam's crimes. The characteristic red wraparound that adorns French books makes the statement, "Two million victims." Here is a companion volume to The Black Book of Communism, which appeared in Paris about ten years ago. Its editor is Chris Kutschera, a journalist, and he has gathered contributions from Arab, American, British, and French specialists, covering every aspect of Saddam's decades of absolute rule. All of them qualify as leftists, prone to establishing obligatory credentials with some gibe about the United States, but all of them also believe that it was right to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
His violence was a repetitive process of killing whoever he imagined to be in his way, whether at home or abroad. So far, 47 mass graves have been located. Like parts of Europe in 1945, or Pol Pot's Cambodia, the country is an ossuary. Given the circumstances, nothing like civil society could take shape. In the pages of this Black Book, the everyday stories stand out, of lives destroyed for no reason. Paulus al-Sinatti was a press photographer who published a picture of Saddam's elder cousin, then titular president. In the photo, the man's hand appeared to have been half cut off. In the eyes of the secret police, this implied lack of power. So, they pounced on al-Sinatti. Refusing to believe that a technical error had occurred in the development of the photograph, they tortured him. He died soon afterward.
A woman whose father and uncles were killed speaks for the hatred inevitably inspired in the huge majority now following the trial on television: "If I catch Saddam, I'll cut him in pieces."
Whether or not justice is perfect, and whether or not Saddam and the other defendants are in their seats to listen, the court offers an alternative to the repetitive process of killing that maintained Saddam and his regime in power. Testifying, one woman wept to recall how she had been hung by the hands, beaten, and given electric shocks. Barzan then ordered the guards to hang her by the feet, whereupon he kicked her three times in the chest. "Master, I have nothing to confess," she entreated him during this ordeal. "Why are you doing this to me?"
The whole ghastly crew of tyrants and their henchmen for whom murder is the determining factor of politics will take note of what answer this trial gives to such a question.
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