Saddam Hussein is scheduled to stand trial starting October 19th, more than 20 months after Americans arrested the former Iraqi leader. The trial will begin with Dujail, a town 35 miles north of Baghdad, where 143 people were killed by forces loyal to Saddam in 1982 in a reaction to an assassination attempt against Saddam. The former president will stand trial alongside 7 other defendants including his half-brother and former head of the Mukhabart secret police, the former prime minister, former Vice chairman of the Baath Party and the former chief judges of the revolution court.
After this trial, Saddam should face a series of more serious charges such as the killing of hundreds of thousands of people during the Al-Anfal campaign, which targeted Kurds in the North at the end of the 1988 war with Iran in an attempt to crush the Kurdish militias, or the killing of thousands of Shiites following a failed uprising in the South after the first Gulf war in 1991. The initial strategy in all these cases was to collect evidence and follow the chain of command, trying lower-ranking Baathist leaders first so as to gather a full range of evidence against Saddam. The question then arises, why is Saddam now being tried first, and in a relatively minor case?

The answer has to do with the inherently political nature of such a trial. The Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) consists of three trial chambers with five judges each, nine appeal judges, fifteen examining magistrates and sixteen prosecutors. It is meant to be an independent court that does not report to anyone in the Iraqi government. It is supposed to apply its own laws and set its own calendar. But this independence has been hard to maintain.

Political pressure

The goals of Iraq's governing Shiite politicians do not necessarily coincide with the legal process the IST is charged with carrying out. Some of these politicians have accused the IST of obstructing and delaying the trial, saying the tribunal's staff members are former Baathists. As a result, nine out of 16 investigating judges may be fired by the de- Baathification committee, which is charged with rooting Baathists out of the public office. The committee fired the IST's general administrator in July 2005 based on article 33 of the tribunal's statutes, which states that no former Baathists can be part of the IST.

Some Iraqi politicians believe the execution of Saddam would reduce the scale of violence in Iraq, and have urged that he be tried and executed before the elections in December 2005. "The IST has to be completely independent. We cannot allow any political interference," said one appeals judge. These efforts are widely viewed as attempts by influential political figures to divert attention from the government's relative unpopularity and its failure to improve basic services. The Regime Crime Liaison Office (RCLO), an American governmental body providing support for IST investigations, is virtually the only group that sees no need to speed up the process.

The IST has never been free from political pressures and interferences. Its staff was appointed by Coalition provincial authorities, political parties and the council of ministers. "Most of the [IST] judges and prosecutors spent their entire careers as lawyers and not judges," explained one prosecutor. But they are brave. Their lives and the lives of their families are in serious danger, and they have to work in secret. The witnesses have the same problem. In a country as dangerous as Iraq, it is not easy to strike a balance between having an open and fair trial and ensuring the security of the IST staff.

Disorganized defense team

The defense team for Saddam is also facing internal problems. On August 23, Saddam fired his entire team except for Khaleel al-Dulaimi. Mr. Dulaimi has requested that the trial be postponed, saying he was not informed of the trial date in time. Although it is true that Mr. Dulaimi was not personally notified, the court did inform another member of the defense team, Khamis al-Obeidi, and gave him the prosecution file on Aug. 10. The defense team is clearly disorganized, and some of its members seem to be using the case for their own purposes.

The IST has also had trouble securing international support. The UN and the international community have kept their distance because of their reservations about the death penalty. They have informed the IST that it can expect support if it eliminates the death penalty. For most Iraqis, especially the countless families who were Saddam's victims, there is no contradiction between justice and death penalty. Despite all these difficulties, however, it appears that Saddam Hussein's trial will begin on schedule.