DaCuBaN
10th July 2004, 22:45
Let’s be clear: Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant and the world would not mourn his death. Why then should we be concerned that the legal proceedings put in place to bring him to justice fall far short of those required in a true democracy?
After all, nobody is any doubt about the conclusion Saddam’s trial will reach. He was in charge of a regime that gassed its own people in Halabja; that invaded Kuwait; that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who threatened his power.
And, as Iain Macwhirter argues on the opposite page, just because you criticised the war – and this paper consistently did just that – doesn’t mean you can’t support the principle of a humiliating public trial. Indeed, such a trial is essential for Iraq to draw a line under the reign of Saddam. If ever a country needed to look not to the past but the future, and to be helped to move on, then Iraq in 2004 is such a country.
Other countries have similarly needed such help. South Africa in the immediate period after the end of the apartheid era also looked for a symbolic end to the horrors the majority of its people had endured under the rule of the National Party. Rather than a legally defined revenge, the Truth And Reconciliation Commission was put in place. For many, the contrived process lacked real justice, but it did succeed in delivering a degree of openness and clarity about what had gone on during apartheid.
Perhaps Nelson Mandela’s regime realised there would never be justice for what had happened, and that they should accept something less. But by accepting less, the wounds are still not fully healed.
The Nuremberg tribunal, which sought to deliver justice to those who had helped create and feed the horrors of the Third Reich in Germany, started with the legal premise that no court in the world had ever tried to do what it was embarking on. The legal architecture of Nuremberg was contrived, perhaps out of necessity, and some might say it was destined to be legally flawed. However, Nuremberg’s aim was to ensure that those who looked back on how Hitler’s Nazi regime was punished saw an openness and clarity in the tribunal’s attempt to dispense justice. Did it succeed? Perhaps the only answer lies with the German people: how they were able to move on; how they were quickly able to rejoin the world community; how they succeeded in restoring their national pride to become a forward-looking nation. The effect of delivering justice is not only about the ultimate conclusion, it is also about how that conclusion has been reached. It is about the transparency of the process of justice.
The new Iraqi regime may hope that the images of Saddam the world saw on its television screens demonstrated that nobody will ever be above the law again. That is an admirable aim, but a few edited images are not enough. Questions of whether the process is legal or illegal, transparent or a theatre of legal illusion, do not seem to concern America. President Bush called the handover of sovereignty to a United States-appointed interim Iraqi government “full and complete”, when the control of the country is still patently in the hands of the US. Likewise, this is called an Iraqi court, but the judge in charge was appointed by the now-departed proconsul, Paul Bremer.
There was, of course, an alternative. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, may have begun in 1946, but its origins can be traced to 1922. The new International Criminal Court (ICC), established by the Rome treaty of 1998, built on the groundwork of the ICJ to promote the first-ever international court that aimed to promote the rule of law and ensure that international crimes do not go unpunished.
The ICC also sits in The Hague and came into formal existence only two years ago. It has already tried to deal with the fallout from Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Saddam and the horrors of his dictatorship would appear a natural case for the ICC to hear. Although the UK are signatories of the Rome treaty, the US is not. The reason? The US believes its own constitution and the primacy of the presidency and its own supreme court forbids giving power away to the ICC.
But let’s face it: the US thinks it not only knows what is best for itself, it thinks it knows what’s best for Iraq, and was not prepared to delay the proceedings against Saddam any longer. Longer than what? Longer than the run up to this year’s presidential election? The danger of leaving it too long is that a trial will no longer knock the daily carnage inside Iraq off the front pages.
Even ministers from the UK government have trotted out the suggestion that Saddam appearing before the International Criminal Court in The Hague would be taking the justice process away from the Iraqi people at a time when they must be seen to control their own affairs. This is a spurious argument that is barely worth dwelling on. An Islamic dimension to any proceedings at The Hague could have been arranged. In such surroundings Saddam would have been given what was necessary to prepare his case.
The proceedings would have perhaps taken years (as is evident from the lengthy exercise involving Slobodan Milosovic), but Washington and George Bush do not have years to wait. They are not prepared to wait until a fully elected Iraqi government, one that holds actual sovereign power, is in place. So there is an urgency to see Saddam executed. That the UK government, despite there being no death penalty in British law, has said it would ‘‘respect’’ this decision if that is what the Iraqis choose to do, means Tony Blair has (again) decided to comply with Washington’s need for urgency.
The result? A flawed trial, lacking legal transparency and clarity, robs Iraq of the one thing it needs to face the future – that is to fully understand its past horrors. If the reign of Saddam is never to be repeated, there must be no opportunity for any future regime to rewrite this period of history. There should be no US deadline for delivering justice in Iraq.
http://www.sundayherald.com/43109
After all, nobody is any doubt about the conclusion Saddam’s trial will reach. He was in charge of a regime that gassed its own people in Halabja; that invaded Kuwait; that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who threatened his power.
And, as Iain Macwhirter argues on the opposite page, just because you criticised the war – and this paper consistently did just that – doesn’t mean you can’t support the principle of a humiliating public trial. Indeed, such a trial is essential for Iraq to draw a line under the reign of Saddam. If ever a country needed to look not to the past but the future, and to be helped to move on, then Iraq in 2004 is such a country.
Other countries have similarly needed such help. South Africa in the immediate period after the end of the apartheid era also looked for a symbolic end to the horrors the majority of its people had endured under the rule of the National Party. Rather than a legally defined revenge, the Truth And Reconciliation Commission was put in place. For many, the contrived process lacked real justice, but it did succeed in delivering a degree of openness and clarity about what had gone on during apartheid.
Perhaps Nelson Mandela’s regime realised there would never be justice for what had happened, and that they should accept something less. But by accepting less, the wounds are still not fully healed.
The Nuremberg tribunal, which sought to deliver justice to those who had helped create and feed the horrors of the Third Reich in Germany, started with the legal premise that no court in the world had ever tried to do what it was embarking on. The legal architecture of Nuremberg was contrived, perhaps out of necessity, and some might say it was destined to be legally flawed. However, Nuremberg’s aim was to ensure that those who looked back on how Hitler’s Nazi regime was punished saw an openness and clarity in the tribunal’s attempt to dispense justice. Did it succeed? Perhaps the only answer lies with the German people: how they were able to move on; how they were quickly able to rejoin the world community; how they succeeded in restoring their national pride to become a forward-looking nation. The effect of delivering justice is not only about the ultimate conclusion, it is also about how that conclusion has been reached. It is about the transparency of the process of justice.
The new Iraqi regime may hope that the images of Saddam the world saw on its television screens demonstrated that nobody will ever be above the law again. That is an admirable aim, but a few edited images are not enough. Questions of whether the process is legal or illegal, transparent or a theatre of legal illusion, do not seem to concern America. President Bush called the handover of sovereignty to a United States-appointed interim Iraqi government “full and complete”, when the control of the country is still patently in the hands of the US. Likewise, this is called an Iraqi court, but the judge in charge was appointed by the now-departed proconsul, Paul Bremer.
There was, of course, an alternative. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, may have begun in 1946, but its origins can be traced to 1922. The new International Criminal Court (ICC), established by the Rome treaty of 1998, built on the groundwork of the ICJ to promote the first-ever international court that aimed to promote the rule of law and ensure that international crimes do not go unpunished.
The ICC also sits in The Hague and came into formal existence only two years ago. It has already tried to deal with the fallout from Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Saddam and the horrors of his dictatorship would appear a natural case for the ICC to hear. Although the UK are signatories of the Rome treaty, the US is not. The reason? The US believes its own constitution and the primacy of the presidency and its own supreme court forbids giving power away to the ICC.
But let’s face it: the US thinks it not only knows what is best for itself, it thinks it knows what’s best for Iraq, and was not prepared to delay the proceedings against Saddam any longer. Longer than what? Longer than the run up to this year’s presidential election? The danger of leaving it too long is that a trial will no longer knock the daily carnage inside Iraq off the front pages.
Even ministers from the UK government have trotted out the suggestion that Saddam appearing before the International Criminal Court in The Hague would be taking the justice process away from the Iraqi people at a time when they must be seen to control their own affairs. This is a spurious argument that is barely worth dwelling on. An Islamic dimension to any proceedings at The Hague could have been arranged. In such surroundings Saddam would have been given what was necessary to prepare his case.
The proceedings would have perhaps taken years (as is evident from the lengthy exercise involving Slobodan Milosovic), but Washington and George Bush do not have years to wait. They are not prepared to wait until a fully elected Iraqi government, one that holds actual sovereign power, is in place. So there is an urgency to see Saddam executed. That the UK government, despite there being no death penalty in British law, has said it would ‘‘respect’’ this decision if that is what the Iraqis choose to do, means Tony Blair has (again) decided to comply with Washington’s need for urgency.
The result? A flawed trial, lacking legal transparency and clarity, robs Iraq of the one thing it needs to face the future – that is to fully understand its past horrors. If the reign of Saddam is never to be repeated, there must be no opportunity for any future regime to rewrite this period of history. There should be no US deadline for delivering justice in Iraq.
http://www.sundayherald.com/43109