ICTJ in the News

March 11, 2007

US Lawyer Helped Iraq Fight Saddam

The Columbus Dispatch

By Kevin Mayhood

David DeVillers describes an accidental encounter with Saddam Hussein during the former Iraqi president's trial for genocide.

In the barren courthouse hallway in Baghdad, David DeVillers thought he saw the attorney he was looking for. From behind, he placed his hand on the man's shoulder and said, "Mustafa."

But the man who turned to him wasn't Mustafa. It was Saddam Hussein.

Saddam politely said hello in English.

DeVillers, an assistant U.S. attorney who was working behind the scenes to prosecute Saddam, quickly collected himself.

"How ya doin'? " he asked.

That wasn't the only time that DeVillers saw Saddam during seven months in Iraq, but it was his closest encounter.

DeVillers is a former assistant Franklin County prosecutor who built a reputation taking down street gangs. Wanting to participate in a warcrimes trial, he volunteered with other federal lawyers to assist in Iraq.

He recently returned to the U.S. attorney's office in Columbus after assisting in the prosecution of Saddam and six others for the genocide of Kurds in northern Iraq. The job was dangerous; three defense attorneys had been killed before DeVillers arrived in Iraq.

While he was there, the chief judge's brother-in-law was killed and his nephews shot. Weeks later, the brother of lead prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon was killed, as were pilots who had flown DeVillers to meet Kurdish witnesses. But the trial continued.

On trial days at the fortresslike Iraqi High Tribunal courthouse, DeVillers arrived in an armored truck. He carried a pistol along with his paperwork.

Saddam and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," and five subordinates were charged with the systematic killing of as many as 180,000 Kurdish civilians.

Only Iraqi lawyers were in the courtroom. American lawyers who helped the prosecution and defense stayed behind the scenes.

DeVillers spent much of his time interviewing and preparing witnesses, and going over the former government's documents and other evidence used in the genocide case.

"A lot of what we do there is what we do here: flipping snitches - finding out who was a bad guy and who knew what happened and who would be a witness," he said.

Some days, he could see Saddam and Ali as he sat in a booth off the courtroom. Highlighter in hand, DeVillers marked incriminating passages in government records printed in English while a translator marked the passages on the Arabic documents projected to the High Tribunal. Inside the courtroom, al-Faroon guided the judges through the evidence.

The judges were shown records of Saddam and his cabinet discussing how to use chemical weapons against Kurds, DeVillers said. Included in what he saw was advice to make sure the wind was calm so the "special weapon" would seep into the village and kill everybody.

And he saw an order signed by Ali for the military to behead captured Kurds but to torture them for information first.

In the midst of the prosecution's case, the Iraqi appeals court upheld Saddam's death sentence handed down in the first of his trials. He had been convicted of crimes against humanity for gutting the village of Dujail after an attempt to assassinate him there in 1982. Hundreds of village men were held and tortured, and 148 were killed, most after being sentenced to death in show trials that lasted minutes.

DeVillers was with Saddam's attorneys when they rode by armored caravan to the secret prison where Saddam was held and told him his appeal had been denied.

Americans controlled Saddam everywhere but inside the courtroom and so reviewed the appeal decision and Iraqi law, DeVillers said.

"There was pressure to execute him right away," he said. "We said we would not turn him over until the Iraqis followed their own procedures."

On Dec. 27, DeVillers, who had been interviewing Saddam's half brother, Watban Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, for an upcoming trial, accompanied him to a meeting room so he and Saddam could share goodbyes. Saddam handed Watban his will and belongings.

Three days later, U.S. soldiers escorted Saddam to the gallows.

The International Center for Transitional Justice, which monitors international trials, criticized the execution, saying the trial was fraught with problems. The center, along with the organization Human Rights Watch, called the Dujail trial a step forward for Iraq but marred by political interference, weak defense lawyering and an inadequate prosecution case.

Though the system has flaws, the Iraqis are working to correct them, DeVillers said.

"Under Saddam, the justice system was reduced to forcing a confession and ordering punishment," he said. Now, prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys are learning quickly.

Miranda Sissons, an Australian native who recently returned from Iraq after observing the Kurdish genocide trial for the Center for Transitional Justice, said problems remain but she saw improvement.

"The presentation of evidence and nature of the evidence is much improved," she said in a telephone interview from New York.

More trials against Saddam's regime are to come. During his tour, DeVillers helped an Iraqi investigative judge build a case on the mass killings of Marsh Arabs. After the failure of the 1991 uprising against Saddam, the rebels, mostly Shiites, fled to the southern marshlands, where the Marsh Arabs provided protection.

A paper trail reveals governmental orders to poison their drinking water, DeVillers said. The government drained the massive marshlands to allow armored vehicles to pursue the inhabitants. Cities were flattened by air attacks.

An estimated 400,000 fled the area, DeVillers said. "Tens of thousands were killed. It's impossible to tell how many."

The witnesses he interviewed were walking records of atrocities: Most were missing a hand or an ear or a tongue.

A villager told DeVillers how he was ordered out of a hole to watch a bulldozer bury 30 of his neighbors alive. He was then freed to warn others.

DeVillers doesn't expect to return to Iraq. Other attorneys will assist as members of Saddam's regime are tried for the Marsh Arabs campaign as well as other cases. He has confidence in the Iraqis he worked with to build the justice system.

"The Iraqis I met had a feeling of frustration but optimism, and I share that," DeVillers said. "They've been through 30-some years of a socialist dictator. They have to get their feet wet."