Rights groups decry trial, execution of Hussein

Following the Dec. 30 execution of Saddam Hussein, President Bush issued a statement in which he described the hanging as an "important milestone" on Iraq's path to becoming a thriving democracy. Bush said that Hussein "was executed after receiving a fair trial.... Fair trials were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule. It is a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move forward after decades of oppression that... Saddam Hussein received a fair trial." Despite Bush's repeated assurances on the fairness of the former strongman's trial, a number of prominent human rights advocates strongly condemned Hussein's death sentence, and the trial that preceded it, as a travesty of justice. In a strongly worded statement, Human Rights Watch said that the "execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein following a deeply flawed trial for crimes against humanity marks a significant step away from respect for human rights and the rule of law in Iraq." Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commenting shortly before the execution, said there were "a number of concerns as to the fairness of the original trial, and there needs to be assurance that these issues have been comprehensively addressed." James Dyson, an Amnesty International spokesman, said the organization "believes the whole process was deeply flawed." In a press release issued by Amnesty following the execution, the organization said "the Iraqi Appeals Court had failed to address the major flaws during the former dictator's trial before the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal which had rendered it unfair." The appeals court rejected Hussein's appeal on Dec. 26, issuing the Iraqi government a 30-day deadline to carry out the death sentence. Hussein's defense lawyers had 30 days to file an appeal from the Nov. 5 verdict which handed down the death sentence to Hussein and two codefendants for the killing of 148 people from the town of Dujail in 1982. The official trial judgment was made available to the lawyers on Nov. 22, leaving them just two weeks to respond. "It defies imagination that the appeals chamber could have thoroughly reviewed the 300-page judgment and the defense's written arguments in less than three weeks' time," Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch said. "The appeals process appears even more flawed than the trial." With Iraq emerging from war and political tumult, and its legal system for decades a captive of a corrupt and authoritarian regime, many judicial experts believed Hussein should have been tried in an international court, or by a "mixed court" including international experts and Iraqis. Dicker, one of the leading critics of the trial, said, "even before the US troops took Baghdad the American government announced it wanted an all-Iraqi tribunal. The decision was made regardless of the facts on the ground." Dicker said that without any international lawyers and jurists taking part, "the trial went off the rails at the moment of conception." The Bush administration, Dicker said, "was at a low point in its jihad against the International Criminal Court" when insisting on an all-Iraqi trial, "and it also wanted to make sure [the verdict] would include the death penalty, which wouldn't happen in an international court." But with the United States serving as the biggest financial and technical supporter of the trial–contributing more than $100 million to courtroom construction, and supplying the Iraqis with advisers, lawyers and forensic investigators–the trial was also open to charges of bias from the start. In addition it suffered from meddling by Iraqi politicians, who publicly criticized the proceedings. Human Rights Watch said the tribunal "was undermined from the outset by Iraqi government actions that threatened the independence... of the court." "The Iraqi High Tribunal was not independent of political pressure coming from the Iraqi cabinet," Dicker said. "In January [2006] the judge in Saddam's trial resigned in protest because he was publicly criticized by the prime minister for being too lenient in the way he was conducting proceedings." That kind of political interference, he said, is "wholly inappropriate to the judicial process." What Hussein had faced, he said, was "trial by ambush" that was marked by the failure of prosecution to provide defense attorneys evidence that was being introduced in court. Sometimes the evidence to be presented was given to defense lawyers at the last minute, and sometimes not at all, he said. That denied "an effective and meaningful defense." Human Rights Watch issued a 97-page report in November detailing numerous flaws in the trial. The report, "Judging Dujail: The First Trial Before the Iraqi High Tribunal" was based on 10 months of observation and dozens of interviews with judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers. It cited an overall lack of preparedness on the part of the Iraqi High Tribunal. The report said the court was manifestly unprepared for such a legally and factually challenging case when the trial began in October 2005. Despite having US advisers, the judges and lawyers were insufficiently trained and were unprepared for the hostile environment. The level of expertise of the Iraqi trial judges, administrators, prosecutors and defense lawyers was "not sufficient to fairly and effectively try crimes of this magnitude." The prosecution and investigative judges appeared unfamiliar with the elements of proof required to establish individual criminal responsibility under international criminal law. The report also criticized the lack of protection for the defense lawyers. Three of the lawyers, including one who was acting for Hussein himself, were killed during the trial, and others were attacked by gunmen. During the televised proceedings of the opening session, while only the faces of the chief prosecutor and presiding judge were shown from among the prosecuting team, all of the defense lawyers were visible. The following day, one of the defense team, Sadoun al-Janabi, was kidnapped and shot dead. Three weeks later, Adel al-Zubeidi and Thamer al-Khuza'i, defense counsel for the defendants Taha Yassin Ramadan and Barzan al-Tikriti, were attacked by gunmen and Zubeidi was killed. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch both oppose use of the death penalty on principle, and the groups say handing the death sentence has been compounded by an unfair trial in the first place. "We oppose the death penalty in all cases as a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, but it is especially abhorrent when this most extreme penalty is imposed after an unfair trial," Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Program said in a statement. "It is even more worrying that in this case, the execution appeared a foregone conclusion, once the original verdict was pronounced, with the appeals court providing little more than a veneer of legitimacy for what was, in fact, a fundamentally flawed process," he said. Smart said the trial "will be seen by many as nothing more than 'victor's justice' and, sadly, will do nothing to stem the unrelenting tide of political killings."