A Nation Stands on Trial

October 24, 2005
Confusion and Fear in the Courtroom and Iraq
By PATRICK COCKBURN
in Baghdad

It should have been a moment of supreme triumph: Saddam Hussein finally brought to bay, standing in the dock in Baghdad to answer for his crimes. The trial ought to have marked the victory of the new Iraqi state, but instead served only to underline its fragility.

Human rights groups in Britain and the US criticised the proceedings against the former president of Iraq and six other defendants as "victor's justice". But in Baghdad there were few signs of victory. If the Iraqi government was so victorious, why did four out of five of the judges and all but one of the prosecutors need to hide their faces and identities? Why were 30 to 40 witnesses too scared to turn up? Why did the court building have to be more heavily defended, as a US marshal jocularly remarked, than the White House?

War crimes tribunals in Germany and Japan after 1945 left nobody in any doubt about who had won the war. In Baghdad, the first day of the trial of Saddam--now set to resume on 28 November--certainly showed the former dictator in defeat, but also demonstrated how difficult and dangerous it is to replace him.

The lethal anarchy of life in Iraq outside the Green Zone inevitably revealed itself within a day of the trial being prorogued. Sadoun Said al- Janabi, the lawyer for Awad Hamed al-Bandar, a revolutionary court judge on trial with Saddam, was kidnapped by seven gunmen and later shot dead.

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occupying power that armed and backed the dictator and now proposes to deliver him to "justice". It's an embarrassing charade that isn't fooling anyone except the ignorant sheep that voted for this empire- building group of thugs.

It's painful to see how far the US has strayed from the principles it purports to believe in.