ICTJ in the News

April 5, 2006

Saddam trial resumes amid fresh genocide charges

Agence France Presse

BAGHDAD-The tumultuous trial of Saddam Hussein resumed Wednesday after a three week break, with charges of genocide in a separate case now looming for the former Iraqi dictator.

The only defendant in the court, a composed Saddam Hussein walked into the tribunal and immediately launched into a tirade against the interior ministry as the chief judge Rauf Abdel Rahman opened the session.

Saddam describing the ministry as a "side that kills thousands in the street and tortures them."

He however was interrupted by the judge who told him to refrain from political statements to which Saddam said "you're scared of the interior minister, he doesn't scare my dog."

Saddam and seven other co-defendants are currently on trial for allegedly executing more than 140 inhabitants of the Shiite village of Dujail following an assassination attempt there against the deposed president in 1982.

The Iraqi High Tribunal on Tuesday said it would charge Saddam and six others for genocide for their role in the killing of Kurds in the late 1980s during the Anfal campaign.

The recess was originally meant to give the judges time to draft the specific charges in the case, reexamine evidence and move the trial to the next phase, but much still remains to be done, chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mussawi told AFP last week.

Mussawi also said that the prosecution has new documents linking the defendants to the case.

"They involve communications and messages exchanged between high officials" of the previous regime over the Dujail affair, Mussawi said.

The issue of documents will be central to tying the defendants to the crimes they are charged with, but several of the defendants cast doubt on the authenticity of the documents presented so far, many of which bear their signatures.

A US official close to the court said Tuesday that Wednesday's session could be a short one.

"The court will be adjourned to permit experts to analyse the handwriting in documents challenged by the defendants," he said, who expected the analysis to take two weeks.

This delay is only the latest in the decidedly awkward progress of the trial.

The earlier 17 sessions of the trial so far have seen boycotts from defendants and their lawyers, lawyers assassinated, judges resigning and repeated grandstanding by Saddam and other former regime officials in the dock.

Following the last session, however, some experts noted that the trial seems to be settling into a kind of groove and actually moving forward.

"What's been important about the last couple of sessions in March is that there has been no major crisis, which is a change," said Miranda Sissons, a senior associate with the International Center for Transitional Justice observing the trial.

"It is beginning to look like a legal process," she said in comments, indicative of the lowered expectations for the trial.

In his March 15 intervention, Saddam called for resistance as well as urging Iraqis to end the cycle of sectarian killings and civil strife begun by the destruction of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February.

With the defense rejecting the legitimacy of the court, there have also been concerns expressed internationally over the fairness of the trial.

In a report to the UN Human Rights Commission, Leandro Despouy, who monitors the independence of judges and lawyers, pointed to "notorious failings" in the trial and suggested the accused should instead answer to "an international tribunal which could count on the cooperation of the United Nations".

For his part, though, Saddam has rejected suggestions from his defense team to move the trial out of Iraq.

"Saddam told us on this issue, 'I was born in Iraq and I want to die there'," said Saddam's Jordanian lawyer Salah al-Armuti.