Execution will hold up to scrutiny, expert says

[Algorem]

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/116747193382830.xml&coll=2

(English translation of Iraqi court's opinion- http://law.case.edu/saddamtrial/dujail/opinion.asp )

Saturday, December 30, 2006
Barb Galbincea
Plain Dealer Reporter

...Scharf said the court's 298-page, single-spaced ruling will with stand history's scrutiny in chronicling "this sad chapter in Iraqi history." It is the longest judicial opinion ever written in a war-crimes trial, said Scharf.

Skeptics, he predicted, will be less skeptical after they see the documentation in the detailed opinion...

Scharf, who helped train the Iraqi judges and prosecutors, found the lengthy trial maddening at times...

A former State Department lawyer, Scharf also is a co-founder of the Public International Law & Policy Group. The organization was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year for providing pro bono legal assistance that promotes peace and brings war criminals to justice.




Storm rages over trial, sentence

Human rights advocates say process that saw three lawyers murdered amounted to a travesty of justice

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/166492

December 30, 2006
Olivia Ward
Staff reporter


...But while the man labelled the Butcher of Baghdad had few defenders, a number of prominent human rights advocates have criticized his death sentence, and the trial that preceded it, as a travesty of justice.

During the year-long proceedings three defence lawyers were murdered, a judge resigned and two others were fired, lawyers boycotted the courtroom and Saddam told the tribunal to "go to hell."

"There were a number of concerns as to the fairness of the original trial, and there needs to be assurance that these issues have been comprehensively addressed," said Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, before Saddam's hanging was carried out. "I therefore call on the Iraqi authorities not to act precipitately in seeking to execute the sentence in these cases."

Arbour, a former prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, indicted Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who later died before the court could arrive at a verdict...



Saddam Hussein Execution: Mixed Reactions in the United States

http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/3919
Sat, 2006-12-30 15:26
Daya Gamage US Bureau Asian Tribune

Washington, D.C. 30 December (Asiantribune.com):

The ouster of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein by Coalition Forces led by the United States plunged that nation in to chaos which led to the current 'sectarian war; or now slowly being termed as 'civil war' but execution at 6:05 am Iraqi time on Saturday will absolutely not have any bearing of what's happening now in Iraq was the consensus of political and foreign policy experts here.

Professor Michael Scharf, who trained the Iraqi judges for the trial, told the CNN that the trial was very carefully planned using Iraqi official documents that bore the signature of Saddam Hussein. He opined that the trial was free and fair even dropping several charges against the former Iraqi dictator.

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted him and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from a town where assassins tried to kill him in 1982.

The execution also came at a time the Bush administration, having confronted with the findings of the Iraqi Study Group recommendations that were unpalatable for White House, was searching for a new path and a different course of action in his already failed Iraqi policy. The Bush Administration's adventurism in Iraq dominated the mid term elections in November that cost the Republican Party both the Senate and the House after 12 years...



The Trial of Saddam Hussein

http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/12/20061229.asp

We review the long and sometimes chaotic trial of Saddam Hussein with Michael Scharf, director of the Cox Center War Crimes Research Office at Case School of Law.
Listen

[lostnotforgotten]

1. Help Me Understand

Saddam Hussein executed for gassing some hundreds of Kurds.

Bush kills 3,000 US troops (maimed some 20,000 or so) and probably some 600,000 Iraqis.

Is there a disconnect here?

The implications are obvious to me.

[54anickel]

5. That was not why he was executed. The charges of gassing the Kurds

was to be a separate case. He had 2 more cases pending, the Kurd gassing was one, putting down the rebellion prompted by Poppy Bush was the other. Seems someone didn't want those cases to go to trial and see the light of day.

[lostnotforgotten]

6. In The Media's Eyes, This Is Why He Was Hanged

Because it is all the American people were fed for months as one of the reasons for Bush's invasion.

[54anickel]

10. I don't see your point in spreading the media's misinformation. Besides

it was thousands of Kurds, not hundreds. To be fair to the news media, most of the reports I've seen that went into the details did in fact mention the other 2 cases. Obviously that does not include Faux, but then again I don't consider them a news media.

[lostnotforgotten]

12. One Forgets The Drumbeat before Bush's Invasion

When the shifting sands of justification would circle round repeatedly to Saddam gassing the Kurds.

[saigon68]

7. Yes, Rumsfailed was in this mess up to his chin

Giving Sadam the tools to fight the Ayatollah

[leesa]

8. He is being executed for a reprisal against an attempt on his families lives.

The Bush Crime Family is dispatching a potential critical witness against them.

[lostnotforgotten]

9. In The Media's Eyes, This Is Why He Was Hanged

Because it is all the American people were fed for months as one of the reasons for Bush's invasion.

[Tesha]

17. Men with nuclear weapons are a lot harder to execute, n'est pa? (NT)

[Missy M]

2. A former State Department lawyer from the US training both the...

Iraqi judges and prosecutors for Saddam's trial seems wrong to me.

[LiberalFighter]

13. Which laws did they use to convict Saddam?

The laws that were in place when the people were killed?

The laws that were created by the Iraqi elected legislative body free of foreign intervention after Saddam was captured?

Or the laws that were created by the Iraqi judiciary trained by U.S. personnel after Saddam was captured?

[gratuitous]

16. Those are terribly pertinent questions

And sadly, they go unasked. Who has the authority to try the maximum leader of a nation? After all, during the time he's maximum leader, whatever he says or does is the law. Certainly people of good conscience and respect for the rule of law are frustrated and appalled by such a tyrant, but there is no legal handle for holding him accountable in his own country.

There's a very good reason this country doesn't allow the victim of a crime to try the accused. Passion overrules reason, and it is a common article of faith in this country that justice should be administered without passion, with due process for the rights of the accused, and following well-tested rules of law. The very caption of a criminal proceeding reflects this: It's not Valerie Victim vs. Sammy Scumbag, it's The People of the State of Wherever vs. Sammy Scumbag. The crime is presumed to have hurt the entirety of society by disturbing the peace and damaging the common bonds of trust that hold us all in society.

The majority Shiite people who suffered so terribly under Saddam and his Sunni henchmen certainly deserve redress and justice. But they aren't the ones -- in our tradition of criminal justice -- who should sit in judgment. Saddam should have been bound over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Except the current outlaw regime running the world's remaining superpower is justifiably chary of recognizing the ICC's authority.

[tanyev]

3. Kind of hard to undo it even if it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

[saigon68]

4. Do a little research on these Bush bots

They are a coterie of Thuggish corporate enablers

[Algorem]

14. "expert"/coconpirator?

headline just calling him an expert seems a little disinformational

guess he was originally hired into Bush Sr.'s(James Baker's?)State Dept.
http://law.case.edu/faculty/faculty_bio.asp?id=142&adj=0

"...My interest in this area began when I served as Counsel to the Counter Terrorism Bureau and Attorney-Adviser for United Nations Affairs at the

U.S. Department of State during the Bush (Sr) and Clinton Administrations. As Executive Director of

the Public International Law and Policy Group, which is headquartered at Case Western Reserve Law School, I continue to provide legal assistance to a number of foreign governments... "





Arrr.Dead men tell no tales.

http://www.sh-boomm.com.au.nyud.net:8090/images/Stickers/skull%20n%20bones.jpg

[Kagemusha]

11. It's funny to be seeing Arbour throwing stones

I wasn't a big fan of how she handled the Yugoslavia business.

[Evergreen Emerald]

15. I get a sick feeling in my stomach from the whole thing

The invasion with no justification

The non-neutral trial in the non-neutral place that did not even have the appearance of fairness--more akin to Alice in Wonderland where the queen of hearts said, "sentence first, verdict after."

The whole thing is ugly and un-American. What have we become?

[Frank Cannon]

18. It holds up to the closest scrutiny and the highest legal standards...

say FOX News legal experts Crikey Jumbuck and Wally Didgeridoo.

[Justitia]

19. LOL! -eom

[VegasWolf]

20. ROFLMAO! -eom

[oblivious]

21. War-crimes trial? But he wasn't even convicted and hung for a war crime.

"It is the longest judicial opinion ever written in a war-crimes trial, said Scharf."

[Toots]

22. We consider it a basic right to appeal a Capital case verdict.

Saddam was granted no appeals even though four of his attorneys were killed.