A rchive Date
[ 16-12-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[ http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/News/2003/12/16/288471.html
Iraqi push for execution
But world involvement may delay Saddam trial
By NIKO PRICE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tue, December 16, 2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Their exuberance over his capture still fresh, Iraqi leaders said yesterday they want to send Saddam Hussein to a quick trial with an eye toward executing him by summer. But they may have to wait. "We will work with Iraqis to develop a way to try him that will withstand international scrutiny," U.S. President George W. Bush told reporters in Washington.
"There needs to be a public trial and all the atrocities need to come out and justice needs to be delivered," he said.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the world body would not support bringing Saddam before a tribunal that might sentence him to death.
Britain said it would not take part in any trial that could lead to Saddam's execution. Others have said Saddam should be tried by an international court rather than by Iraqis under a U.S.-led occupation.
Asked whether he favours an execution, Bush said, "I've got my own personal views. This is a brutal dictator. He's a person who killed a lot of people. But my personal views are not important in this matter ... It's going to be up to the Iraqis to make those decisions."
Asked if he had a personal message, Bush said: "Good riddance. The world is better off without you, Mr. Saddam Hussein."
Members of the U.S.-appointed Iraq Governing Council said the trial would be televised in the interest of exposing Saddam's atrocities and beginning a process of national healing.
"This man has killed hundreds of thousands of people. If he has to be killed once, I think he has to be resurrected hundreds of times and killed again," said council member Mouwafak al-Rabii, a human rights activist imprisoned under Saddam.
Al-Rabii and other council members said proceedings against the deposed dictator would begin soon in an Iraqi special tribunal written into law last week.
"Very soon. In the next few weeks," al-Rabii said. "We passed the law. We have almost agreed on most of the judges and prosecutors. We're almost there. I can tell you, he's going to be the first."
Appearing to contradict earlier statements that Americans would leave it to Iraqis to work out the details of their special tribunal, state department spokesman Richard Boucher indicated yesterday that Washington now planned to play a major role in crafting the court.
270 MASS GRAVES
Boucher said the state department would send Pierre-Richard Prosper, its ambassador at large for war crime issues, to Baghdad early next year to work on setting up a court.
Investigators who have yet to be appointed will have to sift through documents - 300 million of them at last count, according to council member Dara Noor al-Din - and examine evidence including some 270 mass graves that won't even begin to be exhumed until the end of January.
But members of the Governing Council want a quick trial - and a quick execution.
"We will get sovereignty on the 30th of June," al-Rabii said. "I can tell you, he could be executed on the 1st of July."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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