By Cassam UTEEM

In his keynote address to the 7th Chief Justice Conference from the 8th to 11th December 2006, in Lucknow, India, Dr T. P. Amerasingh of Sri Lanka, President of the Institute on World Problems, referred to the Iraqi Courts Judgment that held Saddam Hussein guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging.

What matters, according to Dr Amerasingh, is not so much whether Saddam is hung or imprisoned but rather whether the trial was fair and the result met key fair trial standards. The Iraqi Court set up in 2003 after the US invasion of Iraq, has many shortcomings:

1. There was no timely disclosure of incriminating evidence;

2. Defendants were not permitted to properly confront witnesses;

3. Judges? conduct reflects basic lack of understanding and of trial principles.

The US Human Rights Watch has, in its 97-page report, concluded that ?the soundness of the verdict is questionable?. The demand of the World?s public is for a retrial in a competent court and the enthronement of the rule of enforceable World Law.

Justice Amerasingh is of the view that the proper court to judge Saddam should be the International Criminal Court. And this should be done speedily as attempt is being made to bury the main issue in a heap of side issues in order to avoid Saddam?s accomplices from being drawn into a retrial in a competent court.

The new trial will no doubt reveal to the world how monsters we created and offered as scapegoats while the true perpetrators of evil continue to repeat their evil designs and keep the world in servitude. Unless and until these accomplices are brought to book, planet Earth will continue in its mad career of death and destruction.

Saddam may not be the last of those pathetic figures, not to say monsters, like Idi Amin, Bokassa, Mobutu, Marcos, Mussolini, Hitler, Ceaucesceau, but he maybe a heaven-sent opportunity to burst open the ?ring of evil?. That is why he should face a retrial by the International (now World) Criminal Court. The judges would want to have before them not only Saddam?s Iraqi officers who were partners of his alleged crimes but also his known accomplices, who could not be summoned by the Iraqi Court as Iraq was under US & British occupation.

These accomplices who are already in the public eye are important world figures. George Bush Senior : The US Congressional Inquiry of 1992 reported that as President of the United States, he ordered a cover-up to conceal the secret support for Saddam and the illegal arms shipments sent to Iraq via third countries. He ordered missile technology shipped through South Africa and Chile, then ?on sold? to Iraq. Henri Gonzales, Chairman of US House of Representatives Banking Commission is on record to have said that ?Bush and his advisers financed, equipped an succoured Saddam?.

Douglas Hurd : In 1981, the British Foreign Minister travelled to Baghdad to sell to Saddam a British Aerospace Missile System to mark the anniversary of Saddam?s ascent to power.

Donald Rumsfeld : In December 1983, he was in Baghdad and gave tacit approval of the US to Iraq?s agression against Iran. He was there on 24th March 1984 when the United Nations accused Saddam of using mustard gas laced with nerve agent against Iranian soldiers. It should have been within Rumsfeld?s knowledge that this had been transferred by a company in Maryland, USA, licenced of the US Department of Commerce and approved by the State Department.

Madeleine Albright : President Clinton?s Secretary of State was in full approval of the unrelenting embargo she enforced on Iraq, causing half a million ?excess death? of children under the age of five. Her cynical subsequent statement in a television interview showed no remorse : ?We think the price is worth it?, she said.

Bush (Junior) and Blair : They blocked five billion dollars in humanitarian supplies approved by the UN and Saddam Hussein?s government, in food. They blocked items dealt with food, health, water and sanitarians. Nuremberg judges treated similar acts as ?paramount war crimes? and described them as ?unprovoked aggression against a defenceless country?.

Besides these mentioned, there are several other who deserve serious interrogation for spreading and amplifying propaganda that led to worst suffering of Iraqi citizens. They gave credibility to the lies of Bush, and Blair and turned public opinion in favour of Iraq?s invasion.

The blood of 655 000 mainly civilian Iraqis calls for trials and pu-nishment. The trial of Saddam and a few of his cronies to satisfy world public opinion is a travesty of justice and we might say with Mark Anthony in Shakespeare?s Julius Ceasar :

?Oh Judgment thou art fled to brutish beasts

And men have lost their reason?.

Much during Saddam?s rule may not have happened were it not for the support and encouragement of his acccomplices. While Saddam and a few of his cronies have on their hands sentences by hanging from a ?kangaroo court?, his accomplices in crime are planning a mass escape by distracting the public from the main issue in the trial and drawing them into futile debates on the rights or wrongs of capital punishment or the corrective possibilities of life imprisonment.

Let Saddam Hussein?s trial and verdict be the occasion to make a reversal endeavour ?to foster respect for international law?.

*Former President Cassam Uteem has filed the above article from Lucknow, India, where he attended as special guest, the 7th Chief Justice?s Conference.