Iraq
After the Saddam verdict
Nov 6th 2006
From Economist.com

The former dictator is told he will hang and Iraq's authorities brace themselves for Sunni anger
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GUILTY of mass murder: that Saddam Hussein certainly is. But what of the legal process that proclaimed him such, and sentenced him to death, on Sunday November 5th? There are reasons to see the trial as a leap forward for Iraq. There are also reasons to proclaim it a shambles even by the rough standards of what is known as “transitional justice”.

Saddam and two other defendants, his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief judge, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, have been told they will be hanged for their parts in the killing of 148 people in Dujail, a mainly Shia town, in 1982. News of the convictions for crimes against humanity provoked celebratory gunfire in some Shia parts of Baghdad. But a curfew was maintained in the city for a second day on Monday, as authorities feared a violent response from Sunni supporters of the old dictator.

Much good can be said about the process that produced this verdict: the trial was run almost entirely by Iraqis, from judges and investigators to prosecutors and defence lawyers. The Americans funded it and helped in many other ways, for example training Iraqis, gathering evidence, providing security and by catching Saddam in the first place. But it was no victors’ show trial. The ex-dictator had a chance to defend himself publicly, while prosecutors methodically produced proof showing how he used mass murders as a form of collective punishment against his enemies and their associates.

But to say the trial fell short of international standards would be something of an understatement. Saddam’s relentless unruliness, from his tirades in the dock to his hunger strike, made a circus of what was intended to be a noble piece of justice. He deftly took advantage of his appearances in court, turning out smartly-dressed and defiant. Saddam even had to be forced from his seat by court attendants to hear his death sentence read to him. Then, as he stood, Saddam shouted out “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and “Long live Iraq. Long live the Iraqi people. Down with the traitors.”

A judge in this trial stood down after accusations of leniency towards Saddam. A second judge appointed to the court failed to take his seat after he was accused of having ties to the former ruling Baath party. This raised questions of judicial independence. Most ominously, three lawyers for the former Iraqi leader were murdered. Some have even cast doubt on the timing of the verdict, suggesting it may have been rushed out early to benefit Republicans in the mid-term elections in America.

Many questions remain. The first is whether the verdict will stick; a death sentence must be reviewed by an appeals panel. The second is whether Saddam’s second trial will continue. Besides the Dujail conviction, he faces charges of genocide for the 1988 “Anfal” campaign of massacres against the Kurds. The risk of continuing that trial is that similar problems will be suffered: the judge has raised many an Iraqi eyebrow by saying that Saddam was “not a dictator”, and the chief prosecutor’s brother has been murdered. But the victims of Anfal—numbering perhaps as many as 180,000—deserve to be remembered along with the fewer dead of Dujail.

The most important verdict, however, remains that of the violent court of Iraqi public opinion. The televising of the trial may have helped to encourage sectarian tension. The Sunnis may riot or support more sectarian violence if their former defender is hanged; the Shia may act in similar fashion if their chief torturer is not. The risk, either way, is that a trial supposed to promote justice and, arguably, recovery for Iraq, instead becomes just another excuse for violence and division.