ICTJ in the News

October 20, 2005

Not guilty, Saddam asserts as trial opens

International Herald Tribune

By Edward Wong And John F. Burns

Saddam Hussein defiantly faced Iraqi judges on Wednesday in a heavily guarded courthouse in central Baghdad as he pleaded not guilty to charges of mass executions in 1982.

The trial was the beginning of a long process of public reckoning for the decades of repression that Saddam brought to Iraq.

A live television feed showed a judge in black robes sitting upright, often jousting verbally with Saddam and seven other defendants over the legitimacy of the court and the crimes in question. The former Iraqi leader and the others sat in three rows of chairs, surrounded by barriers of white metal bars.

Saddam, 68, who had been escorted into the courtroom by guards in body armor, wore a dark gray suit and white shirt, his eyes moist and his hair neatly combed back. He sat in the first row facing the judge and next to the white-robed Awad Hamad al-Bandar, the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court.

Midway through the session, Judge Rizgar Muhammad Amin, read the charges, which included murder and torture. Saddam and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty.

The judge later adjourned the trial to Nov. 28. The session Wednesday started shortly after noon and lasted several hours.

Saddam's strong-willed attitude, the same one that helped propel him to the ranks of the modern world's most feared dictators, became evident from the start of the trial, when the judge asked him to take the stand first.

Saddam got up from his chair and walked to the podium holding a hardcover copy of the Koran. The courtroom fell silent.

"By the name of God," he said, beginning to recite a holy verse.

The judge asked Saddam to give his full name. The exchange abruptly turned combative, with Saddam refusing to obey and instead launching into short criticisms of the immediate restrictions on him, such as an order preventing his lawyers from bringing pens and paper into the courtroom.

"Are you judges?" Saddam asked at one point. A minute or so later, he said: "I've been wearing my best clothes and waiting for the court since 9 a.m."

The judge persisted: "Give us your full name."

"You know me, because you are an Iraqi," Saddam said, adding, "I don't recognize the parties that appointed you to this court."

"So you won't give us your name?" the judge said. "Sit down."

Later in the session, Saddam angrily shook off the grip of two guards escorting him out of the courtroom during a break. When they tried to grab him again, he shoved and yelled at them, eventually getting his way and walking independently.

The first case being brought against the former Iraqi leader focuses on the execution of more than 140 men and teenage boys from the mostly Shiite market town of Dujail, 55 kilometers, or 35 miles, north of Baghdad. The victims were seized by secret police after a failed assassination attempt on Saddam there in 1982.

On Wednesday morning, images on an Iraqi television network showed residents of Dujail calling for Saddam's execution.

Meanwhile, in Saddam's home town, Tikrit, crowds gathered to show support for their former leader, chanting slogans such as: "You are still the son of Iraq."

They were waving Iraqi flags and photos of Saddam. Iraqi police, wearing blue uniforms and carrying Kalashnikovs, walked through the crowds but did not appear eager to break up the demonstration.

Though the case against Saddam is relatively narrow, it is the first in a series meant to serve as a public accounting for all the acts of murder and torture that took place under his rule. He first became a senior member of government following the Baath Party coup of 1968, then seized full power in 1979 and went on to construct one of the most thoroughly autocratic regimes of the late 20th century.

Even as this trial began, investigative judges in the Iraqi special tribunal were working to conclude their research in more far-reaching cases that would reflect, to a greater degree, the horrors of Saddam's rule.

These include the Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s, which resulted in the deaths of at least 80,000 people, and the suppression of the 1991 Shiite revolt, in which more than 100,000 people were killed in a three-week frenzy. In all, Saddam could face charges in the killings of more than 300,000 people, mostly Shiites and Kurds.

That figure does not include the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who lost their lives in the eight-year war against Iran, starting in 1980, and the ill-fated invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The tribunal, working with the advice of Americans in what is known as the Regime Crimes Liaison Office, first announced the Dujail case this year, although it did not mention that Saddam would be among the defendants.

He was added to the list during the summer because the embattled Shiite-run government, under Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, pressed the nominally independent tribunal, to ensure the speedy appearance of Saddam in the courtroom.

That has opened the court to intense criticism from Western human rights groups, which accuse the judges of being political pawns and of flouting international standards of justice.

Few legal organizations outside Iraq and the United States accept the trial as anything more than a display of "victor's justice."

Both Human Rights Watch and the International Center for Transitional Justice, based in New York, issued statements this month condemning what they described as the shoddy research and shaky legal framework that form the backbone of the trial.

Much of the international criticism also centers on the fact that Saddam and his aides could be sentenced to death for their crimes.

Under the current law, the president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, a former Kurdish militia leader, has to approve any executions. In the past, Talabani joined a group of international lawyers in denouncing the death penalty, but has recently allowed his deputies to sign warrants of execution.

Several cases involving the death sentence are working their way now through the Iraqi legal system and Talabani recently said that "Saddam should be executed 20 times" for the Anfal massacres.

Reactions on the streets of Baghdad were mixed on Wednesday, with many Iraqis welcoming the trial in principle, but many also expressing doubts about how fair it would be.

The other defendants who took the stand with Saddam in the courtroom included Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and a former intelligence chief; Taha Yasin Ramadan, former deputy prime minister and later vice president, and Bandar, the former chief judge of the Revolutionary Court.

All three men are known to Iraqis as being among the most ruthless members of the old regime. Each is accused of playing a decisive role in the Dujail massacre.