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Yesterday’s media reports stated that the court trying the ousted Iraqi leader SADDAM HUSSEIN has decided to postpone the resumption of his trial for five days, due to opposition of some judges to the new chief judge in a last-minute shakeup
Raid Juhi, a judge and spokesman for the tribunal, stated that the trial has been postponed until Sunday Dec. 22 because some witnesses essential to the trial haven’t returned yet from the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Recent developments come as the latest sign of disarray at Saddam’s trial, which has already been marred by delays, assassinations and chaotic courtroom outbursts.
SADDAM's trial has repeatedly been described by numerous analysts as a Soviet-style show a travesty of justice designed to justify the Iraq invasion.
True that the trial could uncover evidence of committing crimes, but it might as well use the forum to remind the world of the foreign support Saddam used to get from the former Soviet Union, the Gulf States and the West, specially Britain and the United States. It could lead to a great political embarrassment for countries and individuals who once aided the former Iraqi regime.
The trial of the toppled leader has been turned into a circus, according to an editorial published on TorontoSun.
SADDAM HUSSEIN's trial in Baghdad has become a circus. Defence lawyers receiving threats, some of them murdered and the presiding judge refusing to return to court.
Last month SADDAM's defense team walked out of the courtroom after the former leader's trial resumed because the judge refused to allow former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark to challenge the tribunal's legitimacy.
After the lawyers walked out, SADDAM told the judge: "You are imposing lawyers on us. They are imposed lawyers. The court is imposed by itself. We reject that."
"We reject the appointment of court employees to defend us," Saddam said.
He and his half brother Barazan Ibrahim then chanted "Long live Iraq, long live the Arab state."
When the judge explained that he was ruling in accordance with the law, Saddam replied: "This is a law made by America and does not reflect Iraqi sovereignty."
Some may say that the Iraqis enjoy seeing what has been described by many as the man who “terrorized his nation” on trial. But morally and legally, the trial is a travesty of justice, the article added, describing it as “an old-fashioned Soviet-style show trial set up by U.S. occupation authorities”, aimed at justifying the U.S. INVASION OF IRAQ, and not determining SADDAM's guilt or innocence.
The court, created by the puppet regime installed by the U.S. occupation authority, lacks any legal basis. And the “criminal” has no proper legal defence, witnesses remain secret and beyond cross-examination, and the lawyers risk being murdered.
Before the trial, a vast propaganda campaign was displayed by the U.S. to demonize the former Iraqi leader.
”A kangaroo court, designed to find SADDAM guilty and probably order his execution,” was set up, the editorial said.
If Saddam’s given the chance to fully testify, he’ll reveal the whole sordid story of America's support and collaboration with his regime, and how the West, including governments of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher provided IRAQ, with both money and weaponry to invade Iran.
Under international law, SADDAM, accused of repressing Kurdish tribes, and using poison gas against them to rid the country of them, had every right to fight rebels threatening the Iraqi government. At that time, Turkey was engaged in a similar fight across the border against its Kurdish rebels.
This recalls similar methods used by Imperial Britain when it ruled Iraq, when the saint of neoconservatives, Winston Churchill, ordered the RAF to use poison gas against "Kurds, Pathans, and other primitive tribesmen." A fierce Iraqi rebellion broke out against British occupation in the 1920s, and Her Majesty's soldiers gunned down some 20,000.
And today, the American invaders committed the same crimes they’re now trying Saddam for, using banned weapons, deadly chemicals in fighting the country rebels, holding 18,000 political prisoners; torturing and abusing suspects.
America is becoming the new dictator of IRAQ.
This trial should be serving a larger moral and legal purpose; it should stand as a deterrent for the future against would-be tyrants- It should be serving as a moral object lesson, educating the Iraqis and the world that decent people and decent countries won't permit a despot's mass murder, aggression, war crimes and gassing of civilians to go unremembered and its perpetrators to go unpunished.
But unfortunately that's not what is happening, so far, at Saddam's circus of a trial.
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