IRAQ: Iraq's Central Criminal Court opened yesterday to tales of international smuggling rings, dodgy Ukrainian sea captains and daring on the high seas by Coalition forces, writes Jack Fairweather in Baghdad.
In the first case to bring to task the oil smuggling trade, a Ukrainian oil tanker captain and his first mate were charged with attempting to illegally export about €1.4 million worth of diesel in a sting operation by British forces.
Hundreds of tonnes of fuel is siphoned off every day from pipelines in the British-controlled Basra province, although the tanker's haul was the largest of its kind.
The trial was only the second time the Central Criminal Court had sat since it was instigated in July to try acts of high felony.
The three Iraqi judges looked suitably impressed with the dignity of the occasion as they sat before an audience of polite officials. "No talking, no eating, no smoking and sitting with your legs crossed," the court usher announced - the latter command in deference to Islamic custom, where it is disrespectful to show the soles of one's feet.
The court heard how in August, the tanker Navstar One was brought by the ship's captain to "smugglers' den" - the waterways near the port of Umm Qasr that has become a haven for black marketers.
There the ship waited while 28 Iraqi vessels brought on board 3,500 tonnes of diesel. "He was called Mustapha," the 63- year-old captain said. "I didn't know about what he was doing," he added, to a knowing nod from the trial judge.
Unfortunately for the captain and his retirement package, the royal marines along with an American surveillance team had been monitoring the ship since it arrived in the Gulf. A secret log documenting the arrival of the diesel was found stored in the first mate's locker when royal marines under Capt Richard Morris raided the ship a few days later.
The two Ukrainians on trial looked nervous. "They're as guilty as hell," one CPA official whispered at the trial. Under Saddam's regime such a hunch by the prosecutor might have led to a summary execution or torture in Iraq's notorious Abu Gharib prison. Things are a little different now.
Iraq's US-led administration has spent £75 million on rejuvenating the justice system. Iraq's laws have been purged of political crimes, while at Abu Gharib prison the torture chamber has been walled off and electric fans installed in the cells. The captain and his first mate will be spending a minimum of five years inside the prison.
Col Mike Kelly, a senior adviser at the CPA, said, "We've really worked hard on the justice system. It's part of a virtuous circle. If we get justice and peace then stability and the political process will feed off it." That's why I'd like to see these smugglers put away for a long time. It will tell people that justice is back," the colonel said.
But like much of the reconstruction process in Iraq, justice takes time.
"Would the defendants kindly leave," the trial judge said.
He and the defence counsel both wanted more time to consider the case.