Oh, What a Circus - The Trial of Saddam Hussain!
Iraq Solidarity Campaign | 19.10.2005 12:33 | Repression | Social Struggles
In the (16-23/6/2005) edition of the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram , the newspaper carried an article “Debates and Dilemmas” by one Baghdad correspondent Nermin Al-Mufty, who has described the trial of former Iraqi President, Saddam Hussain as a “diversionary tactic” by both the US and Baghdad administrations.
The reasons why Ms. Al-Mufty has drawn these conclusions are as she states: “The Iraqi government needs to draw attention away from its failure to provide security to the Iraqi people.”
This belief has been backed up by further information that was published in the British newspaper the Independent, which on 23/6/2005 published a report called the “state of the nation” and revealed that inside of Iraq only “78 percent of households in the country have an unreliable electricity supply: in Baghdad the figure rises to 92 per cent.”
Other points that were raised in the report included the fact that “more young people today are illiterate in Iraq than in previous generations,” and that “Almost a quarter of children between the ages of six months and five years suffer from malnutrition.”
Whilst any trial of Saddam Hussain will of course create a media frenzy around the globe, with the Iraqi government claiming that Saddam “could face up to 500 charges, but prosecutors will focus on 12 well-documented cases.” The fact that only “61 per cent of Iraqi households have access to a safe and stable drinking water supply”, with 28 per cent of this total experiencing daily problems with that supply, will undoubtedly go a miss among the frenzy.
Ms. Al-Mufty goes on to quote one human rights lawyer, who claims that: “The judges, investigators and their families were transferred to the Green Zone after one of the judges was killed.” The lawyer also claims that those involved in the trial are isolated and the newly established Iraqi Ministry of Justice, “has no relationship” with those prosecuting the former Iraqi dictator.
The Iraqi Women’s League, an organisation which was outlawed and persecuted under Saddam and who in the 1950’s had elected the first female cabinet minister in Iraqi history, once described the situation that women alone once faced at the hands of an occupying power - the British. “women suffered from the consequences of backwardness and dependency, and the cruelty of the mediaeval traditions that the “civilised” colonialists strove to maintain.”
The “new democracy” that appears to have been established and is being maintained by the USA, seems to include many of those same “mediaeval traditions” , which many do believe the trial will be used to help erase from peoples minds.
The most famous of those old traditions include the massacre and total humiliation of the people of Falluja, the distruction of ancient sites, the pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib and those of Saddam in his under pants along with the physical, economic and emotional abyss that the Iraqi people have been thrown into at the hands of their “liberators”.
This is not even including the fact that “31 per cent of males over 15 are unemployed” and that only “37 per cent of urban households and only 4 per cent of rural ones have a sewage connection.”
At the end of the article by Nermin Al-Mufty, she demonstrates how opinion is divided upon the fate of the former Iraqi president but people are seeking justice for what occurred under the regime of Saddam Hussain. Though quite clearly, Iraq is in a situation where the welfare of its people needs to be made a higher priority, than a trial that could ultimately appear to be nothing more than a “diversionary tactic”.
By Hussein Al-alak
Chair,
The Iraq Solidarity Campaign
Iraq Solidarity Campaign
Homepage:
http://www.iraqsolidaritycampaign.blogspot.com
Comments
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Saddam on trial in a country where occupiers are given TOTAL IMMUNITY
19.10.2005 18:38
Take every monster that was ever brought to justice in the UK for abusing, or murdering a child. Every one across the whole of our history. Now sum up the magnitude of combined misery caused by the totality of these horrible deeds.
Blair, ONE PERSON, has caused more actual misery and abuse and pain and suffering and death to children and their families than the combined total of EVERY convicted criminal in British history.
Funny thing is, most of you will read this and dismiss it. Not because you do not believe it to be true, but because you have been conditioned to accept that, in the name of politics, even child rape, torture, disfigurement, and murder on the most massive scale is acceptable, providing the victims are NOT of the same group as those represented by the politician.
So, people joke about Blair, when in actuality he is Hindley x 1000000. Imagine that- one million Myra Hindley's contained within one person, Tony Blair. Or, to put it another way, the UK would need thousands of years for our courts to convict people of as many crimes against kids in total as Blair already has to his name.
But, unlike Saddam, Blair will never see the inside of a court as a prisoner. Instead, Blair puts Saddam on trial. Well, if you can call it a trial (and you can't). Hidden judges, no jury, a prosecution that has its own torture show on Iraqi TV (amazing, but true), no standard for a guilty verdict, and the death penalty.
Trials in Iraq are interesting, because no occupier, military or mercenary, can commit a crime in Iraq. Imagine you are one of Blair's favoured mercenaries, an ex-apartheid-era death squad operative. Now, South Africa was ONLY given democracy on the promise to forgive ALL crimes against humanity by the apartheid regime, so some of the worst racist murderers on this Earth are free men, without convictions, able and willing to travel wherever Blair needs dark-skinned humans 'put in their place'.
For convenience, lets call our South African mercenary 'Gray Branfield'. I'm sure the real Gray won't mind, cos he is dead. Now Gray likes anything that hurts a dark-skinned human- rape, torture, murder- the nastier the better. And Gray likes money, and plenty of it. But Gray is no dummy, and doesn't want his fun and greed to put him behind bars. South Africa is no fun any more, so what's a greedy racist monster with a talent for pain to do???
What if there were a country full of dark-skinned humans with NO RIGHTS and NO PROTECTION. What if you could go there, and do ANYTHING to them, and be promised By Blair's Law Lords, and the UN that you had lifetime immunity for ANY act you did to them. What if these people were rich, but all their money was stolen from them, and used to pay people like Gray a king's ransom, tax free, and into any account specified.
Blair scoured the world for men like Gray. If you had full knowledge of what they did in Iraq, you wouldn't want to live anymore. Today, their immunity is authorised by the stooge government of Iraq as well. Think long and hard on this. The so-called members of Iraq's government EXPLICITLY give permission for Blair to bring men like Gray Branfield into Iraq, where they can commit any act, no matter how depraved, without ANY penalty anywhere on this Earth. If Gray had been caught red-handed selling 6-year old Iraqi kids into sex slavery, after having raped and murdered the mothers, and tortured and murdered the fathers, any Iraqi that tried to arrest Gray would be a criminal under UK, UN, and Iraq law, and could be executed on sight by ANY occupying soldier, or foreign mercenary.
Think about that...TOTAL IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION. Can you imagine any concept more EVIL. Blair has given the worst humans on this Earth TOTAL IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION, and sent them into Iraq to do his bidding.
Blair says to you "why SHOULD people have Human Rights?". Blair said to Gray "you have the right to do anything you like to any Iraqi, and for your trouble I will give you a massive reward".
So, whatever is happening to Saddam in Iraq, one thing I promise you, these events have ZERO to do with justice.
One last point. The giving, or arranging of TOTAL IMMUNITY is the GREATEST crime against humanity. EVERY intended warcrime is manufactured this way. Every act of mass corporate murder by one Blair's business goons happens because GREED and NEGLIGENCE are known beforehand to be completely without risk. Since this is so, why is Blair so happy to publicly state such a policy? Don't you think it MIGHT just be connected to the fact that Blair KNOWS that he can genocide Iraqi kids in sanctions and invasion, any yet NEVER be considered the same as Hindley or West??? It is not that we hold our leaders to low standards, it is that we allow our leaders to be clearly worse than the most depraved convicted criminals, without concern that this will most likely backfire on all of us.
twilight
Deja Vu
20.10.2005 10:37
No Twlight, the reason most of us will dismiss it is that we're all too familiar with the vitriolic spam which you post incessantly on Indymedia, and which you can never back up with evidence or proof.
For those of you unfamiliar with Twlight and friends, and in particular how they respond to quite reasonable requests for information backing-up their hypotheses, take a look at:
A theory unsupported by evidence or proof is no more than a theory.
Observer
Hypocracy
20.10.2005 11:17
Disagree anyone?
Not a bad thing in itself
20.10.2005 13:48
No-one here will be surprised that whatever the issue, Twilight manages to use it as a stick to beat Blair. The sky is blue? BLIAR! Football team lost? BLIAR! Trolls on Indymedia? BLIAR! I'm starting to spot a pattern.
Trying Saddam for his well-documented crimes can never be a bad thing. Its utility stands independent from cases that might legitimately be brought against others, including western leaders. If anything, diminishing the principle of sovereign immunity can only be a step in the right direction to holding our own leaders to account before the law.
The current and expected future political situation in Iraq means that Saddam will never be able to be tried according to standards that pertain in stable, long-established democratic jurisdictions. But the process can be made as fair and as transparent as possible. The alternatives are either to delay a trial indefinitely or set Saddam free untried, both of which would lead to a more unjust situation, on balance, than the one that currently exists.
I assume that those who seem to argue against this trial would also dismiss Nuremburg as shameless, politically-motivated victors' justice and therefore would rather that those trials had not happened. Your enemy's enemy is not your friend, so get a grip on reality.
For what it's worth, I'm opposed to the death penalty in principle and I don't see anything in this case that would make me reconsider those principles for a second.
Zorro