WHATEVER THE CHARGES AGAINST IRAQ'S FORMER LEADER, HIS WILL BE ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT TRIALS OF MODERN TIMES.  AS ARGUMENTS RAGE OVER WHERE HE SHOULD BE PROSECUTED AND WHAT THE PENALTY MIGHT BE IF HE IS FOUND GUILTY, TWO LEADING BARRISTERS TRY THE CASE .


Members of the jury, this case is about prejudice, propaganda and politics. President Bush has already passed a death sentence on President Saddam in a broadcast to the world, before the trial has even taken place. It's Bush justice.

I have referred to the person I represent as the President of Iraq. I call him by his title because he has never been deposed by his own people. He has been deposed by an unlawful foreign invasion which the United Nations refused to sanction and which was in contempt of the UN charter. He is held by that unlawful force. The UN has been cast to one side by America, the most powerful nation in the world. It is so powerful it can ignore other nations. Special rules apply to it.

You have seen the defendant on television as a prisoner being medically examined. The rules of war, of course, do not permit such an exhibition of a prisoner. But the Americans do it. Can you imagine what President Bush would have said had that been an American soldier? A prisoner interviewed by the CIA, with no legal representation allowed. It does not matter, does it? In Guantanamo Bay detainees are kept in custody outside the US, so they have no rights or protection. All the civilised rules can be safely ignored.

The trial is a farce. Do you believe for one moment that President Bush would ever accept a verdict of not guilty from you? He would tear up the verdict and order a fresh trial until he got the verdict he wants. President Saddam has already been sentenced.

I should make it plain. The defendant is certainly guilty on some counts. He pleads guilty to taking up the cause of the Arabs with pride and without fear - the cause of the Palestinians. He has been prepared to face Israel - a country occupying the land of the Palestinians in defiance of UN resolutions without complaint from the Americans or British. Like the US, there are special rules for Israel too. The Palestinians know what it is for their defenceless citizens to be bombed and attacked by the Israelis. Iraqi citizens know what it is like to be bombed by the Americans.

Atrocities can happen in any field of battle. They happened in Vietnam, where American troops were involved in atrocities but no one suggested that the President of the US should be responsible - in fact, blame did not even fall on to a senior officer. The Americans claim it is different for President Saddam. But the prosecution has to prove that he instigated the alleged atrocity. There is not the slightest evidence of this. But that does not matter because this trial, under the auspices of an unlawful occupying power, has a foregone conclusion.

See the politics. On 20 December 1983 a special envoy called Donald Rumsfeld visited President Saddam in Baghdad to give support in the war against Iran. The Americans supplied Iraq with economic aid, a computerised database for the interior ministry, satellite military intelligence, tanks, cluster bombs, helicopters and even bacteriological samples.

Iraq has had a territorial dispute with Kuwait for many years. The Iraqis told the Americans about the proposed invasion and were informed it was of no concern to America. But then the Americans decided they needed Kuwait more than they did Iraq. It's politics, members of the jury.

Iraq has, on occasions, been racked by civil wars. This is a country manufactured by the British. They drew the line so that the Kurds occupy part of the land and, like other ethnic groups all around the world, they want to break up the nation and obtain independence. No government can allow this. As in Sri Lanka and other places, this has resulted in terrorist acts and warfare. The President is not responsible for all the actions taken by commanders or even individual soldiers on the battlefield. This principle is accepted by the US for itself, but not for Iraq.

So why did the US rush into this urgent war when the real enemy was al- Qa'ida? It is because of oil, votes and money. A successful war distracts attention away from al-Qa'ida and should attract votes. And as this so- called trial takes place, choreographed by President Bush and his advisers, those same people sit around the table dividing up the spoils of war - deciding which American company shall earn a fortune repairing the damage the Americans have themselves inflicted on Iraq. There are rich pickings, but they are available only to Americans.

And do they believe that President Saddam has been organising opposition from his hiding place? There is not the slightest evidence of this. What is happening is a spontaneous rebellion by patriots against oppressors and their unlawful war and unlawful occupation. The prosecution cannot prove that the President is responsible for every act of war on a battlefield and they know it. Who is guilty, members of the jury? It's all about prejudice, propaganda and politics.



Members of the court, the scale of this case makes it seem that what is on trial is not an individual but the very state of Iraq. Yet the Nuremberg judgment reminds us that crimes are committed by people, not states. The defendant is such a person. He has the same rights of fair trial as any defendant but no claim to special treatment by virtue of his one-time status as president.

What are the charges against him? The defendant is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide - offences that have long been established in international law and which are today included in the statute of the International Criminal Court.

First, there are crimes against humanity committed against the people of Iraq, including the systematic use of torture, rape, murder and intimidation as tools of government. The scale of what was done must not blind us to the sheer horror of what happened to each of the many thousands of individuals who suffered in this system of terror as they were starved, beaten, humiliated, dipped in acid, forced to watch the torture of those they loved and, in so many cases, when every shred of dignity had been torn from them, dispatched in an execution (the costs of which would be carefully charged to their family) or simply left to die.

For over 30 years such horrors were commonplace in Iraq, but new depths of cruelty were reached in the suppression of communities that resisted Saddam's rule. The 1980s saw a whole town - Halabja - wiped out by poison gas and tens of thousands of men and boys arrested and murdered. The same brutality characterised the suppression of the Kurdish and Shia uprisings in 1991 and the campaign against the ancient civilisation of the Marsh Arabs.

That these terrible things happened cannot be denied. They were widespread, systematic and directed specifically against the civilian population. Nor can the defendant's responsibility for them be in doubt. Indeed, far from denying it, he has revelled in it. There are cases - and they are not few in number - when it was his own hand that carried out summary execution or actively participated in the torture of a helpless victim. But the defendant's responsibility does not stop there. He created a system of government in which he was an absolute monarch and in which governance was by terror. None of the horrors suffered by the people of Iraq happened, or could have happened, without his decree.

Second, there are the defendant's crimes against Iraq's neighbours. The use of chemical weapons against Iran, the ill-treatment of prisoners of war and the deliberate targeting of civilian population centres in the war with Iran were war crimes, clearly and unequivocally prohibited by international law. Again, these things could not have happened without the defendant's orders. The use of chemical weapons, for example, was specifically forbidden without his personal order. It is he who bears responsibility for these crimes against the laws of war. The brutal occupation of Kuwait, in which over 6,000 people disappeared without trace and in which the state of Kuwait was systematically plundered and its oil fields set alight, was similarly unlawful and was again the direct product of decisions for which the defendant was responsible.

It is no use the defendant saying that terrible things happen in war. The charges against him concern clear, deliberate and systematic breaches of laws that Iraq and all other states have accepted and that represent the line that has to be drawn between humanity and savagery, even in war.

Finally, there is genocide - the gravest crime of all. The prosecution realises that its task here is more difficult. For you to convict of this, the ultimate crime, you must be satisfied not only that the defendant was responsible for murder but that he intended to destroy an ethnic, racial, religious or national group. The bar is a high one, but we say that in this case it has been surmounted. The assault on the Kurds, the destruction of the Marsh Arabs' way of life, the persecution of the Shia and the attempt to destroy every vestige of Kuwait's separate existence all point to the conclusion that the defendant did indeed have the intention to destroy certain groups.

You have before you evidence of crimes of a scale and savagery that are difficult to comprehend. That the defendant was responsible for these crimes is clear. No serious defence has been offered. He cannot be allowed to escape justice by arguing that others have gone unpunished. Stalin's crimes did not exonerate Hitler, and the recent history of the Balkans, Rwanda and Sierra Leone shows that the defendant is not the only fallen leader to stand trial. If justice and the rule of law are to mean anything, then the defendant must now answer before you for what he has done.

  The Independent on Sunday (London) - December 21, 2003 - FEATURES Section - Page 12