148 executions legal, Saddam trial told

[ConcernedCanuk]

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148 executions legal, Saddam trial told

The judge who oversaw the trial of 148 Shiite men accused of plotting to assassinate Saddam Hussein in 1982 has said in court he had personally issued a death warrant for them and insisted it was legal.

"They attacked the president of the republic and they confessed," Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, said in testimony before the judges trying him, Saddam and six others for crimes against humanity.

/snip/

"The court took two weeks. The 148 men had confessed. It is all in the files."

In a phase of the trial that began on Sunday, four local Baath party officials from Dujail had already made their appearances - three of them contesting sworn statements the prosecution said they had made in pre-trial proceedings.



(IMAGE above is link)

This could get very intersesting -

IF Saddam is found NOT Guilty -

What then George? :shrug:

[Kagemusha]

1. Then they'll charge him with the next atrocity.

The strategy is no secret.

[DS1]

2. A Baathist judge says 148 confessions in two weeks were legal and you're

even willing to accept that theory?

C'mon.

[LiberalVoice]

3. Seriously.

Just because they said it doesn't make it true.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Define 'legal'.

If they followed Iraqi law, it was legal. My guess is that they in fact followed Iraqi law. Totalitarian regimes frequently are sticklers for 'following the law'. Heck, the Nazis followed the law. In general they had laws for everything they did.

What do you think we would do if one of our towns or cities rose up in actual armed rebellion?

None of this justifies the actual behavior which, while it may very well have been legal under Iraqi law constituted violations of perhaps superceding international treatines prohibiting various crimes against humanity.

There are problems however with the legal process under which the former Baath regime is being tried. What laws are they using? This trial should be under the authority of the International court at The Hague. Instead it is under the authority of a dubiously constituted ill-defined Iraq court under the protection of the occupation forces.

[gratuitous]

19. For me, this was why the trial was flawed from the start

As you say, totalitarian regimes like Hussein's are real sticklers for the law, even if they have to pass a law after the fact to justify their actions. For the time of his reign in Iraq, Hussein was the law, and whatever he said, went. Trying to convict him of crimes under Iraqi law is self-defeating; it probably can't be done.

But take him before an international tribunal and try him for crimes against humanity, and you have a good chance of charging him with crimes that will actually stick. The problem, of course, is that the United States doesn't want to turn Saddam over to the ICC, because it would like to continue to ignore its jurisdiction. So messy and inconvenient, don’t you know, for the world’s last superpower to have to answer for its actions to anyone, let alone a bunch of furriners over in The Hague.

[daleo]

20. Just like the Bush government

"...even if they have to pass a law after the fact to justify their actions..."

Isn't that what is being done re: the spying on U.S. citizen's phone calls, etc.?

[termo]

31. laws are not retroactive

he should be trial with laws which existed at the time of the events, both domestic and internatioanl laws.
but I don't see how la hague court which appears after the events has the right to trial him...
the only exception I know are the nuremberg trials which were the right thing to do from a moral point of view, but still it was retroactive laws.

[Warren Stupidity]

32. I happen to agree. about retroactive laws.

Even the Nuremberg trials were questionable on that count, and on the fact that some crimes attributed to the various nazi bastards were very similar in nature to acts of war that the victorious allies also committed. Not a popular opinion though.

At any rate Hussein is a first class vile person so it is difficult to have any sympathy for his plight. That said, he is getting a raw deal in a bogus court.

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. The theory would of course have to be borne out by some demonstration

that the case followed the precepts of Iraqi law at the time.

An international tribunal could, obviously, demonstrate that Iraqi law at the time was itself criminal (as a crime against humanity).

An Iraqi court, following essentially and substantially the same principles of law, would seem to have a more difficult time at it.

[bigbrother05]

4. Don't take this the wrong way, in no

way am I defending saddam, but * executed many more than
that while he was Governor of Texas.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. And did so legally.

And we are proceeding with a dubiously legal process that may result in the execution of an unknown number of detainees in our custody.

[cali]

7. And don't take this the wrong way, in no

way am I defending bushyboy or the status of the DP in Texas or anyplace else in the US, but your statement is a logical fallacy. Those executed in Texas all went through trials (however flawed) and long, long appeals. In Texas, it was years, usually over a decade, between trial and execution.
In this case, they rounded up 148 men and boys from one town and after torture and sham trials done over a period of a couple of years, executed them. Can you truly not see the difference?

[Warren Stupidity]

8. Did they follow Iraqi law?

By the way you do know that your chances of being exonerated by a Texas court for a capital crime are near zero, right?

What constitutes a legal trial in this country has little to do with what constitutes a legal trail in some other country. To state the obvious: our laws do not apply to Iraq.

The defense claim that they legally executed 148 people is probably true and probably irrelevant.

[cali]

9. Warren, I didn't bring up the comparison, I

responded to it. Why didn't you direct your remarks to the poster who brought bush and the Texas DP into the conversation in the first place?

[MrPrax]

13. however flawed?

The fact that YOU noted it makes the statement logical...in fact hundreds if NOT thousands of capital cases over the years in the US are shown to be constitutional dubious, if not outright, fraudulent and illegal.

One that is pretty hard to explain away are many of the Innocence Project cases that can be clearly seen as motived by things other than 'law'.

It is somewhat arrogant on the one hand to suggest that 'bringing the Iraqi people democracy' doesn't also on the other hand presuppose fair trials and democratically determined laws.

[radwriter0555]

10. How is that any different than the death penalty enacted in many US states

today?

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. That it went from start to finish in under a year is one way

That the accused really had no recourse to dispute for the way their so-called confessions were obtained is another.

That said, if Saddam can demonstrate that the process followed the standard processes of Iraqi law at the time, then the court that is trying him has a problem, primarily because this court is substantially unchanged from those courts in terms of its jurisprudence and legal procedures. If it was an international tribunal, there would be little conflict, since an international tribunal could argue that the very laws and procedures through which these "legal" death warrants were produced was itself a criminal act. But a court operating under the same principles? It would essentially have to indict itself in any death warrant obtained on Saddam, since it would be convicting him of following the same procedures to obtain a conviction and death sentence that it is itself following! We're are well and truly through the fucking looking glass here, grin without a cat, and off with their heads, etc.

[Tempest]

14. Will Moussaoui trial show U.S. hypocrisy?

Isn't Moussaoui on trial for his life for pretty much the same thing?

[cali]

15. No

There's plenty of evidence to suggest that Saddam was simply practicing retribution. There's evidence that the confessions were obtained via torture. Moussaoui is being represented by capable lawyers and it's clear the judge is independent. Comparing the trial of 148 pretty much summarily executed boys and men to Moussaoui strikes me as not only absurd, but as a serious insult to their families.

Let's be clear: Saddam was a nasty little dictator who killed Iraqi citizens. If you need a reminder, go take a look at the photos of gassed Kurds. I half expect someone to respond to my post by stating that the US is actually the agent responsible for gassing the Kurds. (Yes, I know we sold Saddam nasty stuff)

Trying him in Iraq was a bad idea, IMHO. He should be in the Hague.

[fedsron2us]

16. The world is full of nasty little dictators

Most are fortunate enough not be sitting on top of some of the worlds largest oil reserves. Some are reviled by the west but left unmolested to carry on their crimes. Others are feted as allies. If the US was so concerned about the killing of innocent civilians then you would think that they might have put more effort into ensuring the perpetrator of that earlier 9/11, Auguste Pinochet, was brought to trial before an international court. Since Washington was his sponsor we know that will never happen.

[Tempest]

17. Bush supports a dictator who boils his victims to death

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1072407,00.html

[Tempest]

18. And Moussaoui's getting a fair trial?

Yeah, that's why the judge in the trial is postponing it while he looks into whether a government witness was coached.


You bring up the Kurds. I guess you're not aware there's no direct proof Saddam was the one who was behind it. There is, however, some proof that Iran was the one who gassed them during the war. Iran was the one with the militarized chemical agent at the time, not Iraq.

[cali]

24. LOL

That the judge has postponed the punishment phase is an excellent argument for the judiciary behaving in an independent fashion. Not the other way around.

There may be no direct proof re Saddam gassing the Kurds, but there's plenty of evidence. There's also plenty of evidence regarding other bad acts perpetrated by his regime.

Again, I think Saddam's trial is a disaster and that he belongs in the Hague.

Do you really want to defend Saddam? One can, after all, condemn with full voice the invasion of Iraq, and at the same time see Saddam for what he was; a thoroughly nasty piece of work.

[termo]

30. they should cancel the trial

since the procedure wasn't respected.

the other evidence for the other acts... well that is another trial where saddam should seat next to some western leaders.
strangely enough, invaders don't want to open this box then bad guy, good guy, it doesn't matter at this stage, the only question is to know if there were legal executions.

[Warren Stupidity]

27. There is little doubt that Iraq gassed the Kurds.

However they did so with our implicit blessings and support. Iraq was our ally and was doing our work for us keeping the bad Iranians occupied with his war against them. Also it was Iraq, not Iran, that initiated the use of chemical weapons on the battlefront. Both sides used them and both sides had military grade banned weapons.

[Rex]

21. What are the legalize of a dictatorship?

Might makes right? So now holding a kangaroo court against a former dictator makes us right and him wrong? We are the new Iraqi dictators (we have the military might) so now how do you try a former dictator? Why even try? Fry his ass up in a deep broiler, show the world how ugly humans can be. How bout we send him to the Hague? There's now an empty jail cell with his name on it.

[underpants]

22. How can you do something illegal if you ARE the law?

It is surprising that they tried this defense but it could work....nah his a** is grass just as it should be.

I thought that the question posed above was going to be the crux of this case. I guess not.

[The_Casual_Observer]

23. Let's say it was a plot against jr. Would they be sentenced to death?

My guess is yes.

[HuffleClaw]

25. of course it was 'legal'.

under iraqi 'law', such as it was. just like bush's policy of detention without trial and torture is 'legal'. the legality is in the eye of the government in question. it wouldn't be surprising if saddam is the next guy to have a 'heart attack' at this point. they have long since given up on trying to capitalize on his trial as an example of 'justice'. its been exposed as a mockery for some time now.

[Emillereid]

26. Want to bet how the US government would deal with an insurrection?

Assassinations?

The court cases might take longer and the appeals -- but I wouldn't doubt the penalty would be death.

Is the Bush administration any more legitimate than Hussein's?

All of this is so hypocritical.

[ConcernedCanuk]

29. An insurrection would surely be a "threat to National Security"

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under the Bush Regime's rules -

so Gitmo, extreme Rendition, and all that would be SOP for anyone in the Bush gang's sights.

Y'all ain't safe in your own COUNTRY fur chrissake.

And your enemy is WHO?

ummm

it's ur Guvbment der methinks . . .

But I's us a dumm Canuk

Whadda I know? . . :shrug:

[Name removed]

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