 Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants will take a step closer to trial in the coming weeks but don't expect an O.J. Simpson-style courtroom drama, a Western legal expert involved in the process said on Wednesday. Saddam and 11 of his most senior aides face charges that range from crimes against humanity to genocide after decades of brutal rule ended in April 2003 by the U.S.-led invasion. The Western expert, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the next hurdle in the process was when investigating judges refer charges against some of the 12 to an Iraqi trial court. He said that this would happen "in weeks." "Chemical Ali," Saddam's feared cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, and former defense minister Sultan Hashem are expected to be two of the first accused to go to trial. Once lodged, proceedings could move fast, depending on how many pre-trial challenges to the legitimacy of the process are made by defense lawyers. Many in Iraq want speedy justice and death for the leaders of a government that murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands. Iraq has the death penalty, traditionally delivered by either hanging or firing squad. But there will be no show trial in the Western sense, although the proceedings will be televised and open to the public. "It is not going to be a system where you have Johnnie Cochran cross-examining somebody in the O.J. case for these periods of drama," he said, referring to the defense lawyer who helped U.S. celebrity O.J. Simpson defeat murder charges in 1995. This type of trial by jury does not exist in Iraq, or indeed in many other places outside the United States and Britain. Instead, Iraq's civil law system, which mirrors the civil law proceedings of European countries such as France and Italy, will plot a much more methodical and systematic path. Nor will the trial itself take very long, although all the accused will have the right to an appeal. "Trials in civil law settings are nowhere near as protracted as trials in common law settings," said the expert, comparing a process that would last only a couple of months to U.S. hearings that can stretch into a year or more. Judgment and sentencing are made simultaneously in Iraq.
The accused will face five judges in the trials court, who will cross-examine witnesses on atrocities such as the gas attacks against Kurds in the north in the 1980s, for which Chemical Ali is accused, or the suppression of the 1991 Shi'ite uprising in the south. Trials will also probably be run separately for the different crimes, for example one trial for the Kurdish killings and a different one for the crushing of the Shi'ite rebellion. Witnesses may enter protection programs and some will probably appear in secrecy to safeguard their identities and prevent reprisals. They may also have to address the court at the same time as other witnesses, if the judges decide that they have offered conflicting testimony. The trial judges, who act as questioners and have a much more prominent role than either the prosecution or defense lawyers, must also weigh an absolute mountain of evidence.
Some of this has come from more than a dozen mass graves that have been exhumed and studied by forensic experts seeking clues to crimes that span more than 25 years. "I will give you an example. In the Anfal campaign (in Kurdistan) we have 182,000 killed, thousands of villages destroyed and millions of documents that need to be studied and prepared to build the case," Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin told reporters this week. "Identifying responsibility in the chain of command and who gave the orders is not going to be easy." |