Saddam verdict could make legal history -experts
Source: Reuters
By Ibon Villelabeitia BAGHDAD, Nov 4 (Reuters) - "If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out; if he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken." Iraq's first contribution to legal history dates back nearly 4,000 years, to the Babylonian Hammurabi Code that found echoes in the biblical version "an eye for an eye". On Sunday, Iraq will add another chapter, when Saddam Hussein hears his judges. If convicted, the ousted president could be sentenced to hang for the killing of people from the town of Dujail. Legal experts say the verdict will add a new milestone in the development of international war crimes trials since Nazi leaders were judged at Nuremberg 60 years ago. "Dujail is going to go down in history as a superbly important proceeding," said Michael Scharf, international law professor at Case Western Reserve University in the United States, who trained Iraqi judges and prosecutors for the case. Most importantly, Scharf said, Dujail can set an important legal precedent, with consequences for the Bush administration, on where governments draw the line on the "war on terror". Saddam has admitted ordering trials that led to execution orders for 148 Shi'ite Muslims in Dujail following an attempt on his life there in 1982 by underground Shi'ite guerrillas. But he has said it was his legal right as a president fighting Iranian-backed "terrorists" at a time when Iraq was at war with Iran. Bush, Scharf noted, has used the same argument to justify wars and holding men without trial at Guantanamo Bay. "This is an argument we have not heard since Nuremberg," he said, referring to trials against Nazi leaders after World War Two. "We'll have to read the reasoning very carefully." Other legal experts said the case is so flawed that a verdict will amount to little more than victor's justice. Since it opened a year ago in a Baghdad courtroom, three defence lawyers have been killed, the previous chief judge quit over political interference, and spiralling sectarian violence that erupted after Saddam was ousted in the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 has made the case seem almost irrelevant to many Iraqis. Fuelling suspicions about the impartiality of the court, set up by a U.S. occupying administration to try Saddam, Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said death for his former enemy Saddam cannot come soon enough. The Shi'ite majority, now in power, was persecuted under Saddam's Sunni-dominated rule. The fact that the verdict is set to be announced two days before U.S. mid-term elections also has raised questions of political interference. A guilty verdict might vindicate Bush's policy of removing Saddam as he faces criticism over the war. A FAILURE "In a larger sense, the case has starkly failed to serve as a cornerstone for Iraq's new democracy," said Jonathan Drimmer, who teaches at Georgetown Law Center, focusing on war crimes. "Trials that are perceived as unfair can erode trust in the integrity of the justice system and government institutions, inflame passions in polarised situations, and potentially compound national instability," Drimmer said. Scharf, who has assisted in the prosecution of other fallen strongmen such as Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor, said all war crimes proceedings, including Dujail, are "messy": "There is a myth that these tribunals are designed to foster peace and reconciliation. In fact they do the contrary in the short term. Even Nuremberg was divisive at the time and there were charges of interference by occupying powers in Germany. "But one of the reasons you can't deny the Holocaust today is because Nuremberg produced 20 volumes of evidence. Evidence against Saddam will be there. It takes generations to look back at these trials and judge whether they were fair or not." Scharf, who was recently in Cambodia advising on a forthcoming trial of Khmer Rouge leaders, said prosecutors and judges there were studying the first Saddam case to "learn from its mistakes and its successes". Saddam and his lawyers have dismissed the trial as a sham and say the verdict has been rigged by the Americans. The Hammurabi Code, which sets laws on anything from wheat prices to marriage to theft and debt, shows little mercy for a judge who errs in his verdict -- he shall pay twelvefold the penalty he set, and be forever banned from sitting in judgment.
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