Iraqis are deeply divided over the trial of Saddam Hussein that is scheduled to begin next Wednesday, writes Lara Marlowe
What people think about Saddam's trial usually depends on whether they are Sunni or Shia Muslim. Saïd is a Sunni office manager in Baghdad. "We don't like this trial," he says. "He is an Iraqi and the American government has organised his trial. Saddam Hussein is still our president. It is shameful for all Iraqis to allow him to be tried here. The Shia are with Iran, and Iran wants to try Saddam."
Ali, a Shia businessman, says he is eager for the trial and the expected execution of Saddam to be over. "There are many people who think what is happening here is an American movie, that they will wake up and Saddam will be back in power. When he's dead, they'll stop dreaming."
Zuheir Maliky, an Iraqi judge not associated with the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) that is trying Saddam, says his colleagues and their American mentors "have turned the most important trial in the history of this country into a farce".
Next Wednesday, Saddam and four other people, including his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Alwan al-Bandar, the judge who was an accomplice in the killing of 143 people in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982, will be brought into a courthouse that was one of Saddam's palaces in the Green Zone in Baghdad.
In three previous court hearings, Saddam appeared alone, in civilian clothing. "Because he was still under investigation, he was not in a cage," Judge Maliky said. "This will be a show for the media - not a trial. Saddam will be in a cage with the four other defendants. He will not be allowed to speak on Wednesday."
THE IST IS expected to convene for only one day, then postpone the remainder of the Dujail trial for perhaps two months. The prosecution has reportedly amassed 800 pages of evidence about the massacre, which followed a failed assassination attempt against Saddam's motorcade. Saddam's forces killed the men and women, then took their names to Judge al-Bandar so he could pass death sentences on people who were already dead.
The IST has not made it clear whether Saddam will subsequently be tried on other charges, which could include the assassination of Shia religious leaders in 1974, the Anfal extermination campaign against the Kurds between 1986 and 1988, the chemical gas attack on Halabja in 1988 and the repression of the Kurdish and Shia rebellions in 1991. An estimated 180,000 Kurds and 200,000 Shia were murdered under Saddam's rule, and 200,000 other Iraqis disappeared.
But trying Saddam for these greater crimes could be dangerous. His lawyers are likely to point out that the US, British, French and German governments supplied him with the chemical precursors and other weapons he used to kill his own people.
The IST was created in December 2003, three days before Saddam was captured in a hole near his home town of Tikrit. The US occupation authority entrusted Salem Chalabi, the nephew of the maverick Shia politician Ahmad Chalabi, with setting up the tribunal. Ahmad Chalabi was the central figure in convincing the US to invade Iraq. His nephew, a specialist in commercial law, had no experience of criminal or Iraqi law.
Salem Chalabi had lived in exile until 2003 and spoke Arabic so poorly that he drafted the statutes for the tribunal in English. He stipulated that none of Saddam's judges could be former Baathists.
Chalabi was dismissed and left Iraq in August 2004, after being accused of involvement in the murder of a finance ministry official. He was replaced by Taleb al-Zubaidi, a former senior Baathist who filled the court with Baathists. The Americans discovered their error the following March, by which time a majority of the 37 judges on the IST were former Baathists. They replaced al-Zubaidi with Amar al-Bahri, who was in turn dismissed by the Shia-led Jaafari government which came to power in May 2005.
AT PRESENT, THE tribunal is divided among Chalabi loyalists, other Shia judges and former Baathists. The latter cannot be dismissed because to do so would nullify the legal proceedings they've undertaken.
"The judges are fighting about everything," Judge Maliky says. "Just two weeks ago, they argued about what type of car each judge will get."
Anthony Scrivener, the British QC and former chairman of the British Bar, has been retained by Saddam's daughter Raghad to head Saddam's defence. His office said he intends "to challenge the lawfulness of the tribunal trying Saddam Hussein". Judge Maliky says that should not be difficult. Under the statutes drawn up by Salem Chalabi, no judges can be former Baathists.