American and Iraqi officials had originally planned to prosecute Mr. Hussein in a series of trials that, they said, would describe his long rule of terror. He is the principal defendant in a second trial involving the so-called Anfal military campaign in the late 1980s in which, prosecutors contend, as many as 180,000 Kurdish civilians were killed.those two paragraphs are pretty similar to two paragraphs that appeared in an article in yesterday's times:
But with the conflict worsening, senior Iraqi officials, including Mr. Maliki, now say they would rather eliminate Mr. Hussein as a source of inspiration for the Sunni insurgents than use the trials to prove his personal responsibility for atrocities during his 24-year rule. According to Iraqi court officials, nothing in Iraqi law would prevent Mr. Hussein being executed before the Anfal trial ends.
But events outside the court appear to have moved sharply against his prospects of seeing the Anfal trial through. When plans for the trials were laid in 2004, American and Iraqi officials envisaged a series of trials at which the full range of brutalities committed during his 24 years in power would be laid out in court. The plan called for Mr. Hussein to appear as the principal defendant in at least three or four cases, along with a shifting cast of associates drawn from 80 other so-called high-value detainees held with him in American custody at the Camp Cropper military detention center near Baghdad airport.it's odd how openly iraqi and american officials are talking about saddam's trial as if it is a show trial. they're not even paying lip service to the idea that it is about national reconciliation or accountability. instead, they're referring to it as a means for killing saddam. i realize with the evidence against him there was never any serious doubt that he would be convicted. still, aren't they supposed to pretend they believe he is innocent until proven guilty? no one seems to believe saddam's trial is anything but a sham, not even the people in charge of the iraqi judiciary.
What has changed the plan is the worsening war. Senior Iraqi officials, including the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, believe that Mr. Hussein, alive, remains a potent rallying point for Sunni insurgents fighting American troops and the American-backed, Shiite-led government. Senior American officials, too, say that using a series of trials to fix Mr. Hussein's personal responsibility for a wide range of atrocities is now a lower priority in face of the Sunni rebels' unrelenting fight to regain the power the Sunni minority lost with Mr. Hussein’s ouster.
the biggest sham is the idea that these trials would somehow help lend legitimacy to the new iraqi judiciary and demonstrate its ability to handle a complex case like this. that was why the bush administration pushed for a trial in iraq, rather than an international court. but if they wanted to do that, at a minimum, officials have to talk like they believe the trial is a real trial and not just a hoop to jump through before execution.
