Critics say US orchestrated death sentence
Although Iraqi judges handed down the death sentence against Saddam Hussein, hundreds of American lawyers, advisers and investigators played a crucial role in the process of trying and convicting the ousted Iraqi leader.
For three years, US officials from the Department of Justice and the State Department pored over millions of Iraqi documents and hundreds of graves from mass killings during Saddam Hussein's 24-year rule in search of key evidence. American advisers helped draft the court's rules. Later, after an elected Iraqi government came to power, US officials still played a key role in the court.
In all, the US government spent more than $128 million building the courthouse, exhuming mass graves, gathering evidence and training Iraqi judges. That figure dwarfed the $9 million spent by Iraq.
For many critics within Iraq and beyond, Hussein's trial has been tainted by the perception -- especially common in the Arab world -- that the American military victors in Iraq orchestrated the judgment. US officials say they wanted to play a lesser role, but few other governments were willing to assist Iraq in bringing Hussein to justice.
"It is very clear that if you look at sentiment in the Arab regional world, the American role in establishing the tribunal and its link to the invasion of Iraq has greatly lessened the tribunal's legitimacy," said Miranda Sissons, a senior associate at the International Center for Transitional Justice, a New York-based organization that researches and supports war crimes and genocide prosecutions.
"This is perceived as an American-dominated process," said Nehal Bhuta, an assistant law professor at the University of Toronto, who observed part of the trial for Human Rights Watch.
US officials say they asked the United Nations, the European Union and a host of countries to assist with the tribunal, but they all refused because they opposed the tribunal's use of the death penalty _ and the US decision to invade Iraq.
Pierre-Richard Prosper, former US assistant secretary of state for war crimes who played a key role in setting up the tribunal, said he approached other countries to take charge of witness protection, the exhumation of graves or judges training. Only Britain and Australia agreed to assist.
"At the time, everybody was saying, 'this is too American.' But it was American by default," he said. "I wanted to dilute the American role.
It would look like we were the puppeteers instead of a noble effort to help the Iraqis administer justice." Even before Hussein's regime was toppled, debates raged over how he should be tried. Human rights groups, European governments, and key Democrats, including Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, argued that he should be prosecuted in an international court, as had been done with the leaders of Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia. They argued that a trial with an international _ not just American _ role would be much more credible and less subject to political pressure.
Although Iraqi judges handed down the death sentence against Saddam Hussein, hundreds of American lawyers, advisers and investigators played a crucial role in the process of trying and convicting the ousted Iraqi leader.
For three years, US officials from the Department of Justice and the State Department pored over millions of Iraqi documents and hundreds of graves from mass killings during Saddam Hussein's 24-year rule in search of key evidence. American advisers helped draft the court's rules. Later, after an elected Iraqi government came to power, US officials still played a key role in the court.
In all, the US government spent more than $128 million building the courthouse, exhuming mass graves, gathering evidence and training Iraqi judges. That figure dwarfed the $9 million spent by Iraq.
For many critics within Iraq and beyond, Hussein's trial has been tainted by the perception -- especially common in the Arab world -- that the American military victors in Iraq orchestrated the judgment. US officials say they wanted to play a lesser role, but few other governments were willing to assist Iraq in bringing Hussein to justice.
"It is very clear that if you look at sentiment in the Arab regional world, the American role in establishing the tribunal and its link to the invasion of Iraq has greatly lessened the tribunal's legitimacy," said Miranda Sissons, a senior associate at the International Center for Transitional Justice, a New York-based organization that researches and supports war crimes and genocide prosecutions.
"This is perceived as an American-dominated process," said Nehal Bhuta, an assistant law professor at the University of Toronto, who observed part of the trial for Human Rights Watch.
US officials say they asked the United Nations, the European Union and a host of countries to assist with the tribunal, but they all refused because they opposed the tribunal's use of the death penalty _ and the US decision to invade Iraq.
Pierre-Richard Prosper, former US assistant secretary of state for war crimes who played a key role in setting up the tribunal, said he approached other countries to take charge of witness protection, the exhumation of graves or judges training. Only Britain and Australia agreed to assist.
"At the time, everybody was saying, 'this is too American.' But it was American by default," he said. "I wanted to dilute the American role.
It would look like we were the puppeteers instead of a noble effort to help the Iraqis administer justice." Even before Hussein's regime was toppled, debates raged over how he should be tried. Human rights groups, European governments, and key Democrats, including Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, argued that he should be prosecuted in an international court, as had been done with the leaders of Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia. They argued that a trial with an international _ not just American _ role would be much more credible and less subject to political pressure.
But senior officials in the Bush administration saw international tribunals as expensive, excessively bureaucratic, and often divorced from the populations they were meant to serve. The Bush administration also opposes efforts to set up a permanent international war crimes court, fearing that it could wind up charging American soldiers.
"They were out to make a political, ideological point that international tribunals were not necessary to try these kinds of crimes," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch International Justice Program.
On April 7, 2003 _ two days before Baghdad fell _ US officials announced that Hussein would be tried in an Iraqi court. Since Iraq's justice system was shattered, they said American advisers would assist.
Over the next year, Americans helped the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council draft the tribunal's statute. That draft, which heavily relied on international standards, became law in December 2003, by order of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
But many law experts called the tribunal illegitimate, since international laws prohibit an occupying power from changing the legal code of the country it occupies. Countries shied away from helping the tribunal after that, Sissons said.
Iraq's own parliament eventually altered the statute _ removing many references to international standards _ and adopted it in October 2005, the day before Hussein went on trial for killing at least 143 men and boys from the town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt.
The new version of the statute mandated Hussein's execution within 30 days of a death sentence.
US officials say that they were involved in nearly every aspect of preparing for the trial, from interviewing witnesses to finding death warrants in the national archives. But they said their main goal was to prepare Iraqis to impartially prosecute the cases.
"We were there to assist the Iraqis in bringing cases to trial," said Greg Kehoe, a Florida lawyer who headed the "Regime Crimes Liaison Office" in Baghdad that worked alongside Iraqis to sift through the evidence. "Whatever the facts bore out, the facts bore out. We had no preconceived notions before the trials." But as Iraqis took charge and Hussein's first trial got under way this year, human rights groups began to warn that interference from newly powerful Iraqi politicians was more dangerous than any American bias.
In January, the chief judge presiding over the Dujail trial resigned after members of parliament criticized him for being too lenient toward Hussein in court. His replacement was also removed when Iraq's De-Baathification Commission accused him of having been a party member. A third judge on the five-judge panel resigned because of a conflict of interest. In September, the chief judge of a second trial against Hussein was removed after saying that Hussein was not a dictator.
In addition, three members of the defense team were assassinated by unknown assailants.
"The result was a very defective trial, which didn't meet basic fair trial requirements," said Bhuta. He called the trial the "worst of both worlds" _ vulnerable to Iraqi interference, but also to charges that it was dominated by the United States.
Sharon Singh of Amnesty International said international judges serving alongside the Iraqis judges would have lessened the impact of the political pressure and made the trial's verdict more widely accepted.
But others say that it was important that Iraqis take charge of the trial on their own. However imperfect, they say, the trial was still a major step forward for Iraq.
"I don't think there was a hidden American hand that directed the trial," said Nimrod Rafeli of the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute. "Those who support Saddam Hussein will always maintain that the trial was not fair. No matter what you do, they will say, the 'US was behind it.'"
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