The trial judges are all either Shi'a or Kurd. The prosecutor is Shi'a. No matter what you personally think of Saddam Hussein, he is entitled to due justice. But what justice and who's justice? Can Saddam Hussein receive a fair and impartial trial in Iraq, or would an International judicial venue be more appropriate in this extraordinary case?
Comments are welcomed and a poll is open to all.
jamesrage said:As far as I am concerned, the only thing Sadam is entitled to is a bullet in his head and what ever else the Iraqi people want to do to him.Let the Iraqis do justice their way regardless if those with weak stomachs see it only as vengeance.I do wonder why he is not being tried for any of the other crimes he committed.
Hmmm... I am still not completely convinced that this war is not for oil. I also would like to know what we were doing supporting Saddam during the 1980s while he committed alot of these crimes. As one poster put on one of the threads: TRY THEM ALL. Try Saddam and all international leaders who supported him. Let's have REAL JUSTICE rather than a victor's justice. Hmm, where do I find the picture of Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussien shaking hands back in the 80s?
jamesrage said:This thread is supposed to be about that rat Saddam getting justice,not republicans good democrats bad or democrats good republicans bad.
Deegan said:Saddam will get a fair trial, but will also get a fair hanging, and the people of Iraq should be the ones to string him up!
Conflict said:I see you believe in due process like you believe in the concept of "innocent until PROVEN guilty". Guess what. No one has been proven guilty. Ironic how it is your type that proclaims to be upholding our constitution. You are doing nothing but spitting on it. You think you are being patriotic with your toady quip. I think you're just being a toad. God forbid you would understand the concepts of nobility and intergrity combined.
Quid Pro Quo said:I see we have another butthead on the forums. I think it was stated clearly enough above that the purpose of this conversation was to the validity, or even the right, of the world to have a piece of Saddam at this trial. Not the politics of why America is in Iraq, Not GWB's agenda...but the trial and it's platform. Attempt to keep it there. God forbid you would understand the concepts of a topic and staying on it combined.
Conflict said:Try not to get your panties in a bunch over my relevant comparison. At the same time try not to delve to deep into your esteemed ad-hominem. Next time refute my concepts and not my character. I suppose your self perceived witt is quite satisfying? Yet you cite topic. Am I the topic?
quidproquo(sycophantes aeqqus) said:What it boils down to, rugrat, is the topic...which has a title and a beginning post...needs to be adhered to, as I am sure Tasha set it up for that purpose.
Tashah said:Comments are welcomed and a poll is open to all...
What do you mean by that?Originally Posted by Quid Pro Quo:
I see we have another butthead on the forums.
Billo_Really said:What do you mean by that?
I would have thought he would be charged with more than the killings in Dujail. After all the rehearsels and tutoring leading up to this trial the Prosecutors have received from US law experts in the Administration, you would think there would be more charges than this.The lone witness
By Fatih Abdulsalam Azzaman, October 21, 2005
The tribunal trying the former leader Saddam Hussein failed to produce what was said to be the only witness to the charges he was being tried for.
The witness, Waddah al-Sheikh, a former intelligence official, said to be dying of cancer, has reportedly agreed to testify in the trial.
Al-Sheikh was working for Mukhabarat, the main intelligence agency, in 1982 when 143 people were killed in Dujial.
If Al-Sheik is the key witness in the trial, how come the tribunal could not have him testify inside the court?
The judges and prosecutors could have had him interviewed before the trial in the presence of defense lawyers and produced the evidence in court.
To suspend the proceedings because the key witness could not appear did not go down well with the millions of Iraqis who were glued to their television screens on Saturday.
Iraqis have been anxiously waiting for the trial only to find that the tribunal which has been preparing for the event for nearly two years fails to bring along the necessary testimony.
Do we only have one witness for the atrocities of Saddam Hussein and his regime?
There are thousands and thousands of Iraqis who would have rushed to the court and testified without fear against Saddam Hussein.
The proceedings raise more than one question mark. Iraqis wonder why the court insists on trying Saddam only for the Dujail killings at a time the list of his crimes is too numerous to be counted.
Many Iraqis say the killings in Dujail were connected with the members of a party in power currently in Iraq. This is why, they add, the authorities have focused on Dujail.
Saddam Hussein executed thousands of ordinary Iraqis who were members of no political party or faction. It was better for the court to start with these cases at least to do justice for the hapless relatives of these victims.
In this case no one would have attempted even to allege that the proceedings were somewhat politically orchestrated.
The killings in Dujail are a crime and any one involved in them must be tried and punished.
But to only try Saddam for these killings sends the wrong message to the relatives of tens of thousands of other victims.
And now the court itself goes to what it has described as the only witness on Dujail killings.
Al-Sheik will testify from his death bed hospital in seclusion without the glare of media cameras and most probably in the absence of defense lawyers, raising even more questions about the whole trial.
http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news2005-10-21566.htm
This is the first prosecuted charge in a rather large indictment portfolio. Dujail was perhaps the first public example of Saddam's 'style of governance' after he formally assumed the Iraq presidency in 1979.Billo_Really said:I would have thought he would be charged with more than the killings in Dujail. After all the rehearsels and tutoring leading up to this trial the Prosecutors have received from US law experts in the Administration, you would think there would be more charges than this.
Tashah said:Can Saddam recieve due justice in Iraq, or is this simply just a show-trial... ornate window dressing for tribal vengence? What Iraqi law applies here, pre-occupation or post-occupation? Sharia law or Anglo-Saxon law? Why were Sunni judges excluded from the trial bench? Can a murderous dictator be tried fairly in his native land? The questions are numerous and involved. Perhaps what it all philosophically boils down to is this...
No matter what horiffic crimes Saddam is guilty of, if it is perceived by the global Muslim community that this is a mere show-trial orchestrated by a puppet Iraqi government and that impartial justice was abbrogated... Saddam will be remembered by many as a martyr. In this light then, the trial means are certainly as important as the verdict rendered.
gwynn said:To try him in Iraq is a mistake by my way of thinking.
First, I think that it will come across to some as a show trial. Maybe not to those in the mainstream in that part of the world, but surely to those on the radical fringes. In short it becomes another recruiting tool for some terrorist organisations and another reason for some to dislike the west.
Some concerns include the occupation forces and impartiality of jurists. I would be very surprised if anyone here had significant doubts of his guilt, but this is not important. The trial must be seen by those in the area as fair and impartial.
Also, I'm not familiar with the specifics enshrined in the Iraqi Constitution, but in most other countries you cannot be convicted of doing something that was not illegal when you committed the act, regardless of how the law later changes. It would not surprise me if this was included and if under Saddam's laws he was above the law. Seems a bit off for the first large scale trial to break such laws ( no matter how ridiculous thay may seem ).
On the other hand, it seems just as unlikely that any broad based international tribunal would be seen as impartial either. It would also make the trial much more difficult, as there are impediments to American forces providing information to international war crimes courts. I believe this was cited as one of the reasons he was not sent to existing tribunals in Rwanda, which is unfortunate because that is one of the few places you might be able to avoid the accusation of bias. I don't see the US government pushing through agreement with an international war crimes court just to see Saddam get a fair trial though.
I do not know what the best solution to this is, but it seems that having him tried in Iraq is a quick way to appease both the Iraqi government and the majority of the population. It will have some long term negative consequences, but democracies tend to ignore those sorts of things.
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