Through Murky Waters: Putting justice to death
Whether or not he was a nice guy, Saddam Hussein deserved more than a show trial
By Alex Sirney, senior writer
Posted on November 6, 2006

In a trial marred by constant drama, disruption and accusations of bias, Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, was found guilty Sunday for his involvement in a security operation in the village of Dujail in 1982 that left 148 people dead. While he will now, according to the sentence, be executed by hanging, the Iraqi government will have a harder time putting to death the debacle that was his trial.

Hussein and co-defendants Barzan al-Tikriti, his half-brother, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, Iraq’s former chief judge, may well be complicit in the Dujail massacre, but the trial that will send the three of them to the gallows and four other co-defendants to prison was far from fair or even conclusive. The evidence presented against the defendants was grisly enough — tales of torture, detention and execution — but the defense claimed that some prosecution witnesses were bribed, some allegedly dead people were still living, and some documents were forged. Whether or not any of this is true is, of course, up for debate, but it is significant that none of these claims were ever investigated by the court.

The five-judge court instead was involved in a rotating parade of faces. Since the trial started last October, two defense attorneys were killed, one fled the country and three judges had come and gone, all by January. Since then things have calmed down — only one attorney was killed — but the defense still boycotted several times and continued to challenge the legitimacy of the court.

While it seems easy to write off much of the defense’s antics as mere political posturing, a case made easier by Hussein’s frequent tirades against U.S. occupation, it must be remembered that no matter how horrible the charges, part of the goal of that occupation is to ensure a fair judiciary. The Iraqi government’s involvement, however, leaves serious doubts. Not only did the court decline to investigate the defense’s allegations, one judge was replaced because he was too lenient toward the defense — he actually let the defendants speak their peace in court. His replacement, who finished the trial, was not replaced when he accused al-Tikrit, Hussein’s half brother, “having blood on his hands.”

The verdict is no surprise, considering the bias of the court and of public opinion around the world. Konstantin Kosachev of the Russian Duma aptly summarized the situation as “quite predictable, given the attitudes to Saddam Hussein’s regime that exist both in and beyond Iraqi society…This is more of a moral ruling, revenge that modern Iraq is taking on the Saddam Hussein regime.”

Other foreign reactions were predictable — European Union nations spoke against the death penalty, Iran decried U.S. complicity in the Hussein regime of the 1980s, and the White House was adamant in showing it still has no interest in talking about reality, especially with a timely verdict two days before midterm elections.

“You now have absolute proof that you’ve got an independent judiciary in Iraq,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said, presumably hoping that, in the world of 24-hour news, people aren’t aware of what is actually going on in the world.

That, of course, is a ridiculous assumption, as any aficionado of Court TV will be able to tell that Hussein’s trial was a farce and, although his guilt may be quite likely, it is absolutely essential for a country so struggling with legitimacy both to its own people and the world body, that a trial as important as Hussein’s be marked with nothing but absolute integrity and credibility. The court in Baghdad, deep within the Green Zone, has failed at this. It can only be hoped that the backlash is limited to the political arena rather — a vain hope indeed in a country so wracked by civil war.

Alex Sirney is a senior anthropology and SMAD major.