The Farce Trial Of Saddam

By Ghali Hassan

23 December, 2005
Countercurrents.org

President Saddam Hussein's ?trial? before a U.S.-orchestrated Kangaroo 
Court is hailed as the ?trial of the century?. Unfortunately, those who 
committed the crimes are rewarded and protected, while their victims 
put on a show trial. It is not Saddam who is on trial; it is the 
international legal system. 

According to Professor Charif Bassiouni of DePaul University, an 
expert on International Criminal Law and former U.N. human rights 
investigator in Afghanistan; ?All efforts are being made to have a 
tribunal whose judiciary is not independent but controlled, and by 
controlled I mean that the political manipulators of the tribunal have 
to make sure the U.S. and other western powers are not brought in 
cause. This makes it look like victor's vengeance: it makes it seem 
targeted, selected, and unfair. It's a subterfuge?. This is the 
accurate definition of a Kangaroo Court. ?The Americans are intent on 
making this pure theatre, a show trial?, said one of Saddam?s lawyers. 

Saddam trial is a theatre. It is a Hollywood show to divert attention 
from the destruction of Iraq and the massive war crimes committed 
against the Iraqi people. Like the invasion, the ?tribunal? is illegal 
and has no legitimacy in occupied Iraq. There is overwhelming prima 
facie evidence to convict George W. Bush and Tony Blair of crimes 
against humanity than to convict Saddam Hussein. Under the U.N 
Convention, Bush and Blair are guilty of crimes against humanity, 
torture, and guilty of wanton destruction of the Iraqi state. 

The reality is; the U.S. and its allies are not interested in a trial 
per se; they are interested in the humiliation of all Arabs. Saddam is 
an Arab and a Muslim. He is used as a symbol to further demonise, 
intimidate and humiliate Arabs and Muslims. The trial is seen in the 
West as if all Arab leaders are on trial. It is orchestrated and 
controlled by Western imperialism. It is a show trial for bullying and 
intimidation other nations. It ?trail? has nothing to do with justice; 
it is a smokescreen for injustice.

The show trial provides Western journalists, pundits, and Western 
(mostly U.S.-based) human rights organisations and NGOs the opportunity 
to show their loyalty to the Occupation and imperialism. Saddam was 
demonised for more than 15 years that he represents the epitome of 
everything bad today. Despite the complete lack of knowledge of the 
man, every journalist and pundit has something to say about Saddam. 
Saddam is resurrected to become part of Western schools curricula. One 
hopes that the curricula will include Saddam achievements including, 
the best education system and the best health care services in the 
Middle East. Saddam provided complete rights for women, before the U.S. 
destroyed every thing.

During Saddam regime, human rights organisations and journalists had 
no problem to go to Iraq and report on the human rights condition 
there. Always negative, of course. They visited detainees in Abu Ghraib 
and elsewhere with considerable access. However, since the invasion and 
occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces, human rights organisations and 
journalists almost completely refrained from even mentioning the 
ongoing abuses of human rights of the Iraqi people by U.S. forces and 
their collaborators. These same organisations who visited Iraq freely 
before the invasion, have no right to be anywhere in Iraq today. Their 
meagre reports were only designed for deception. 

It is not surprising to hear Amnesty International (AI) and Human 
Rights Watch (HRW) criticising the so-called ?Iraqi tribunal?. This is 
the way imperialism works. ?We have grave concerns that the tribunal 
will not provide the fair trial guarantees required by international 
law?, said Richard Dicker of HRW. Can you imagine HRW ?have great 
concerns? for the rights of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis ? men, 
women and children ? who have been arrested, imprisoned, abused and 
tortured without charges? Is Saddam responsible for the slaughter of 
the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, mostly women and 
children? Why HRW and AI have no concerns for the deliberate killing of 
Iraqi civilians by U.S. forces? Only when the wrong person in the dock, 
one hears the rumbling of human rights organisations and NGOs. Saddam?s 
show trial is the best opportunity for HRW, AI and the rest of Western 
NGOs to deceit the world of their real role as the tools of Western 
imperialism. Who will try George Bush for the killing of 30,000 Iraqi 
civilians, as he recently acknowledged?

It should be borne in mind that all the allegations against Saddam are 
unsubstantiated and there is no evidence that Saddam is personally 
responsible for the alleged crimes. The charge ?is totally empty? In 
France, any judge would dismiss the case. It would not even go to 
trial?, said Andre Chami, a French lawyer in Saddam?s defence team. 
Indeed, some of the allegations against Saddam regimes have been 
refuted by the UN and credible Western officials. The allegations 
against Saddam and Iraq were made by Western journalists, expatriate 
conmen, and Western-based human rights organisations and NGOs. 
Moreover, even if Saddam committed crimes, the crimes were committed 
with the full complicity and support of Western leaders, and Western 
media. 

It is not Saddam who is guilty of crimes against humanity; Bush and 
Blair are. The invasion and destruction of Iraq constitute an illegal 
act of aggression ?contravened the UN charter? and international laws. 
?Only the most incorrigible legalists can pretend to be shocked by the 
conclusion that the perpetrator of an aggressive war acts at peril of 
being punished for his perpetration, even if no tribunal has ever 
previously decided that perpetration of an aggressive war is a crime?, 
wrote, Telford Taylor, assistant of the chief American prosecutor, 
Robert H. Jackson, at the Nuremberg Trial. ?To initiate a war of 
aggression?, said the Nuremberg Tribunal's judgment, ?is not only an 
international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing 
only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the 
accumulated evil of the whole?. Sadly, the wrong people are in the dock 
in Baghdad.

Furthermore, no one has articulated the case of war crimes and crimes 
against humanity against George Bush better than Francis A. Boyle, a 
professor of Law and an expert on International Law at the University 
of Illinois. In countless documents, Professor Boyle shows how the 
Nuremberg principle can be used to indict the Bush administration. 
Boyle writes: ?In international legal terms, the Bush Jr. 
administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing 
criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of 
the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg 
Principles, due to its formulation and undertaking of aggressive war 
policies that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the Nazi 
regime?. 

In addition, article 6(b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter defined the 
term ?War crimes? to include: ?... wanton destruction of cities, towns 
or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity...? 
Thus the destruction of Iraqi cities, including Fallujah, Ramadi, 
Hillah, Tel Afar, Baghdad etc. constitutes the wanton destruction of 
cities, and ?it is certainly not justified by ?military necessity?, 
which is always defined by and includes the laws of war?, writes 
Francis Boyle.

Professor Richard Overy of King?s College London, a leading authority 
on Nuremburg Trial and International Law accurately describe the way 
the international legal system works. He writes: ?International law 
works only against weaker states. Big powers have an unmerited, but 
unassailable, [self-induced] immunity?. ?What had happened in Iraq was 
a major crime against humanity, and Bush and Blair could be in the 
dock? and the principles of international legal system should apply in 
trying them. Justice is not achieved by a show trial; it is achieved by 
a fair trial.

The continuing presence of U.S. troops and mercenaries in Iraq is 
against the will of the Iraqi people in contravention of international 
laws. The most urgent action is to put an end to the ongoing crimes of 
the Occupation. Iraqi lives and human rights would be better served by 
the full and immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. 

Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia.

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