ICTJ in the News

December 31, 2006

Joy, disappointment washes over survivors

Winnipeg Free Press

By Alexandra Zavic

'Who is going to be tried now that there is no Saddam?'
-Mohammed Mousawi, whose relatives disappeared

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Sarchanar Mahmoud struggled to articulate the swell of emotions that washed over her when news of Saddam Hussein's death flashed across her television screen.

"There was an indescribable silence and conflicting feelings that I can't explain," said the pale, veiled woman, who still lives in Halabche, the remote mountain town in northern Iraq where half her family died in a 1988 poison gas attack. "After this we came to and started talking."

Family members felt joy that they were rid of the fearsome dictator who had cast a long shadow over their lives. But there also was a sense of disappointment that Saddam would never face justice for what he had done to them.

In Saddam's final hours, calls for a stay of execution came from an unexpected source: survivors of some of the worst atrocities of his blood-soaked regime.
"We are happy that this tyrant's end has come," said Mahmoud, a 31-year-old court investigator in the Kurdish town of Halabche where the gas attack took place. But, "Not in this sudden manner. We wished that the remaining cases would be settled first."

Hundreds of thousands were believed to have been tortured in Saddam's notorious jails, disappeared into mass graves or died in his wars and chemical attacks. But when Saddam was hanged at dawn here early Saturday, it was for just one case: the killing of at least 148 men and boys in retribution for a 1982 assassination attempt in the Shiite Muslim town of Dujail.

Officials with the special court convened to pass judgment on the Iraqi president's decades-long regime say an ongoing trial dealing with the much wider campaign against Iraq's ethnic Kurdish minority that resulted in as many as 100,000 deaths is due to resume Jan. 8. But without the chief defendant, many people fear that interest will dwindle and that countless victims of other atrocities will never receive their proper day in court.

Larry Cox, executive director of the rights group Amnesty International USA, said the rush to execute Saddam days after an appeals panel upheld the sentence "signifies justice denied for countless victims who endured unspeakable suffering during his regime."

"It will doubtless have a devastating impact on other related trials, as the key witness who could most compellingly shed light on the chain of command will have been silenced," he said in a statement.

Saddam had sat impassively through hours of dramatic witness accounts, detailed forensic presentations and startling re-enactment in the Anfal case, but was executed before taking the stand in his defence.

The Halabche warfare featured prominently in Saddam's second trial, where he faced charges of genocide for his Anfal, "spoils" in Arabic, campaign against Kurds living in the northern reaches of Iraq.

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker, had urged the government to delay executing Saddam and top members of his regime at least until the conclusion of the Anfal trial. He wanted them to identify those responsible for the chemical weapons unleashed on Kurdish villagers, including which foreign companies and countries supplied the parts to make them. "A lot of secrets will go to the grave with Saddam and his group," he predicted. "If these trials continue without those people, what is the use?"

Under Iraqi law, all pending charges against Saddam will be dropped and he will not be tried posthumously. But this does not affect charges against six others: Ali Hassan al-Majid, who presided over northern Iraq at the time; Sultan Hashem Ahmed, the campaign's military commander; Sabir Abdul-Aziz al-Duri, director of military intelligence; Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, another senior military officer; Tahir Tawfiq al-Ani, governor of Mosul; and Farhan Mutlak al-Jubouri, head of military intelligence in the region.

Raed Joohi, an investigative judge and spokesman for the Iraqi High Tribunal, said the Anfal trial and other cases, about a dozen in all, will continue.

The next scheduled one concerns the brutal crackdown that took place when Shiite Muslims and Kurdish fighters rebelled at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, following signals that the United States would support them.

Some survivors of the sweeping arrests and killings now doubt the case will make it to trial.

"Who is going to be tried now that there is no Saddam?" asked Mohammed Mousawi, a 58-year-old retired teacher in the southern Shiite city of Najaf.

Mousawi's brother went out to buy bread one day 15 years ago and never returned. Three other relatives disappeared around the same time.

The cursory way in which the court dispensed with Saddam's appeal and the speed with which he was sent to the gallows raised concern about political interference in the judicial system.

"It looks like the trial is buckling to the political process," said Hanny Megally, who heads the International Center for Transitional Justice's Middle East and North Africa Program. "The fear is that after (the next trial), which focuses on Shia, they may say: 'Look, this is expensive, this is taking a long time, let's call it a day.' "

"On the other side of the coin," he said, "Maybe without the big shot in the court room, people will start to focus more on the violations and the complaints and those stories will come out more."

For some people in the ongoing Kurdish case, it was enough to see Saddam hang.

Aisha, a 51-year-old Kurdish villager who gave only one name, will never forget the day she recently faced the late dictator in court and told him about her husband, who disappeared.

"It was a very peculiar feeling, going into that fortified hall with security guards, lawyers, judges and seeing the tyrant dictator sitting in the cage for the accused," she recalled. "I thought that I would be able to face neither him nor this whole experience, yet I found myself very strong and I faced him fiercely."