Saddam’s
Capture, Trial, and Execution
By Abdul-Majid Jaffry
Renton, Washington
The
Second World War began in September, 1939 with
Germany’s attack on Poland. A few days later
Great Britain and France invaded Germany. The
conflict that lasted for six years came to an
end in September, 1945 with an Allies victory.
While the war was still in full swing, as early
as in 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s
War Cabinet had already started discussing the
mode and means to punish the Germans once they
were defeated. Churchill called for the summary
execution of the Germans. However, a court of
law was created and a legal basis of the trial
was established by the victors.
It is the victors who write the history of the
vanquished, it is also the victors who decide
the fate of the humbled. According to many jurists
and historians the Nuremberg trials were acts
of vengeance not a means to serve justice; a political,
not a legal act.
Sixty years later another nation was subdued with
a strategy of “shock and awe” bombing.
But this time it was not a Western nation that
the forces of the USA and Great Britain defeated.
The victorious heroes felt no need to show even
a semblance of respect, at least outwardly, that
was accorded to the defeated German leadership.
The Western media portrayed Saddam's capture as
the triumph of US high-tech innovation and old-fashioned
ingenuity, but independent reports tell a different
story. According to the British Sunday Express,
Saddam was actually captured by Kurdish forces
who bargained with the United States before agreeing
to hand over the drugged leader. American version
that Saddam emerged from the hole to announce
in English: "I am Saddam Hussein. I am president
of Iraq and I want to negotiate" is also
repudiated.
What followed was deplorable. The clip, the first
view in captivity, showing a ruffled and untidy
Saddam docilely submitting to a medical exam,
with a doctor running his gloved hand through
his hair looking for lice and sticking a tongue
depressor in his mouth, and photos of Saddam clad
only in his underwear as a prisoner of war were
a far cry from the manner the Western prisoners
of the war were handled by the Allied forces.
The defeated and starving Germany was in no position
to oppose the Allied forces’ demands in
the Nuremberg trials of German leaders. However,
in Iraq the feeble US installed sycophant Shiite
administration was too eager to comply with the
US wish and for its own sake too keen to remove
the old enemy from the scene to consolidate its
place in the new Iraq
Unlike Churchill’s suggestion of summary
execution of German war leaders, the US opted
to execute Saddam but only after a show trial.
Saddam’s execution meant the Western powers’
only tangible victory in Iraq. Saddam’s
hanging also means a dictator was made to pay
for his crimes, accomplishing the US most cited
war aim after failing to unearth Iraq’s
weapon of mass destruction.
Khalil al-Dulaimi, Saddam’s chief lawyer,
and other commentators have said that the date
on which the verdict was pronounced live to the
world, November 5, 2006, was purposely selected
and hastened by the Bush Administration to influence
the U.S midterm election which took place two
days later and widely viewed as a referendum on
Bush's Iraq policy. This has been called a November
Surprise. Does anyone with an iota of understanding
of working of Iraq believe that the Saddam trial
was run by and for Iraqis? How could a court created
by the occupation forces to serve their interests
provide a fair trial?
The trial, described as the most important since
the Nuremberg trials after World War II, set many
bizarre firsts in judiciary: Four of the five
Judges who presided over the trial resigned, removed
or assassinated. One of the Judges who resigned
publicly acknowledged unbearable political interference.
Four defense lawyers were assassinated during
the trial. Two of the Judges publicly condemned
the accused before the trial began. Defense lawyers
were denied confidential visits to their clients
after the start of the trial. And many more underhanded
acts produced the legal comedy (or tragic comedy)
for the world to watch for over a year.
No high profile trial in recent history has been
so widely condemned as Saddam’s trial. A
whole host of international organizations, including
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and
UN bodies, including the Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention and the High Commissioner for Human
Rights, have all said in unison that Saddam was
not given a fair trial. Perhaps most embarrassing
of all was the decision by the UN Secretary-General,
Kofi Annan, not to support the judicial tribunal
expressing his own concerns over its fairness
and propriety.
Any effort to give the impression of a fair and
impartial judicial process was essentially destroyed
at the execution. Mocking and insulting gibes
at the gallows and the timing of the execution
say it all; it was an exercise in vengeance raher
than an attempt to obtain justice.
The high drama didn’t draw a curtain at
the end of the trial; the climax came at the gallows.
As the trial had set many firsts, the execution
also set its own examples. Perhaps, this was the
first execution where the executioners, in the
presence of prosecutor, jurist and the higher
ups of the Iraqi government, taunted the condemned
man with the noose around his neck. The unruly
execution scene was not of a judicial event but
lynching, complete with derision and hooting by
a cheering crowd. Saddam, who never bowed his
head until his neck snapped, sarcastically asked
the crowd: "Do you consider this bravery?"
It was not only the perverse lynch-style execution
that was censured by the civilized world but its
spiteful timing that was equally deplored. Eid
al-Adha marks Prophet Abraham's willingness to
sacrifice his son for God. Muslim countries often
pardon criminals to mark the feast, and prisoners
are not executed at that time.
