U.S., U.N. should help Iraqis meter out Saddam's justice

The following editorial appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Tuesday, March 9

Everyone agrees that Saddam Hussein, captured by U.S. forces on Dec. 14, must stand trial to answer for his 25-year record of criminality.

To that end, the U.S. Justice Department will soon send investigators to Iraq to lead the job of collecting and organizing evidence against the former dictator. While this investigation will be a difficult business, conducting the trial itself will present even more daunting challenges—and the Iraqi people will need all the help they can get in meeting them.

They need the help because Iraq has not had a criminal justice system worthy of the name for decades. Since 1979, Iraq was run according to the whims and tyrannies of Saddam, his family and his friends, not by an independent system of lawyers, judges and juries. The signing of an interim Iraqi constitution March 8 is an encouraging step forward, not an overnight transformation into a nation with the rule of law.

Without outside help, Saddam’s trial will be conducted by people wholly inexperienced in running even ordinary criminal proceedings, much less the kind of proceeding that Saddam’s trial will require. Tens of thousands of pages of documents will have to be examined. Witnesses will have to be found and interviewed. And while Hussein surely will be the most important ex-government figure to stand trial, some of his top aides also may be brought before the bar of justice, presenting challenges of their own.

The Justice Department investigators can be a big help by assembling and organizing documentary and forensic evidence, and perhaps the U.S. civilian administration of L. Paul Bremer can help supply logistical assistance if it goes out of business at the end of June, as scheduled.

Additional help also should come from other countries, from the United Nations and especially from recognized international jurists and other experts in international law. Ideally, gangsters such as Saddam would be brought before the International Criminal Court, which was formed to deal with those accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But Saddam will not go before the ICC, partly because the Bush administration opposes it, mainly because the Iraqis want to try Saddam themselves.

Probably the best solution is the kind of hybrid tribunal suggested by Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor at the U.N. war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia. Such a court, as Goldstone sees it, would be a mix of local and international judges and prosecutors.

There are compelling reasons Saddam should receive a scrupulously free, fair and open trial. The world—not just the Iraqi people—needs to know as much as possible about what Saddam did during his 25 years in office. Only a trial conducted according to professional norms of justice can be relied on to portray Saddam’s villainy in an orderly and comprehensive way. And however despicable a person Saddam may be, he is entitled to more than the star-chamber justice he meted out to his many victims.

The Bush administration wants Saddam’s trial to be held before election day. Perhaps it can be held before November, but the claims of electoral politics should not figure in the scheduling. The important thing is that it be done by people who can manage it in a professional fashion.

— Responses may be sent to collegian@csufresno.edu.