Seeing Saddam in court was something the Iraqi people simply could not have imagined. A former dictator stood trial in a courtroom silo in order to publicly present the evidence to the people of Iraq and the world…and to pass his own verdict. This is the first step towards the rule of law. The hope is not that he will be punished, which has always been secondary, but that the whole beheading system will be brought to justice.
The trial began in October 2005, two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Iraq is a turbulent mix of violence and politics, and an insurgency hostile to the US occupation is growing. The U.S. government hopes the prosecution of the former dictator will help establish democracy in the new Iraqi state. But events outside the courtroom could derail that process.
In December 2003, President Bush’s representative, Paul Bremer, and a senior Iraqi adviser ruled Iraq. They set up the Iraqi High Court to try Saddam Hussein and his regime. To support the new court, the DOJ created the RCLO – the Regime Criminal Liaison Office – a team of lawyers and investigators.
They want to create a court where people will be tried for the first time based on the evidence presented to the court. Unlike Saddam’s court where you knock on the door in the middle of the night, you are taken to the revolutionary court at 8 am, sentenced at 10 am, sentenced at 2 am, and executed at 6 am.
Investigators gathered evidence in 14 criminal cases against Saddam’s regime. A mass grave has been discovered in the desert city of Hatra. There were 300 bodies, all women and children, almost all with gunshot wounds to the back of the head. This is evidence of the most notorious case – Saddam Hussein’s campaign to exterminate the Kurds in the 1980s.
