BAGHDAD — JAILED President Saddam Hussein and 11 top officials from his regime were transferred to Iraqi legal custody yesterday and his arrest warrant will be read out today, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said. The premier relished the announcement as the legal process kicked off against Iraq’s former leaders allegedly implicated in the massacres of tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, blamed for the 1988 gassing of the Kurds, former Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and ex-Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan count among those to be handed over to face arrest and detention warrants. “This government has formally requested the transfer of the most notorious and high profile detainees to Iraqi legal custody,” Allawi told reporters. “So Saddam Hussein ... along with up to 11 other high valued detainees will be transferred to the legal custody of Iraq tomorrow.”
And the spectacle of a shackled Saddam dragged before an Iraqi judge on Thursday under heavy security is expected to be televised and the images of the fallen dictator beamed around the world. The detainees will remain guarded by US-led multinational forces until the Iraqi detention services are ready to take physical custody, Allawi said. “Up until that day, the multinational force will keep these detainees and will transfer them over to Iraqi justice. The multinational force has agreed to that.” However, some Iraqis will help in guarding the men, said Salem Chalabi, the head of the special tribunal, established last December to prosecute members of the old regime. Allawi refused to say whether Saddam would face the death penalty. “We are still discussing a host of issues,” he said. “We will tell you about it as soon as we finish discussing whatever we agree on.”
Saddam would have the right to legal counsel, including the right to represent himself as is the case with former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, whose trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity in The Hague has already lasted for more than two years, Allawi said.
“We don’t think he will be able to stage a propaganda coup but it will be an open trial and he’s entitled to any representation,” he said.
But he urged the public to be patient, warning that the process could take a long time. “We will likely not see the trial of Saddam ... for some months. I urge Iraqi people to be patient.” Foreign lawyers would need to be authorised first by the Iraqi Bar Association, according to Justice Minister Malik Dohan. He also said Saddam’s lieutenants who remain at large such as Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, who was considered his deputy, could be “charged in absentia if evidence is established against them.”
The other men to be handed over Wednesday include high-ranking former Baath party members Mohammed Hamza al-Zubaidi, who sat on the the decision-making Revolutionary Command Council, and Aziz Saleh al-Numan, Baath leader for western Baghdad. Former defence minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed, who was rumoured to have collaborated with the US military during last year’s invasion, was also named.
Sabir Abdul Aziz al-Douri, Saddam’s head of military intelligence, and Kamal Mustafa Abdullah, the commander of the elite Republican Guard, will also be transferred by the US-led coalition. Chalabi said he expected more detainees to be transferred in the coming weeks. Saddam will most probably face war crime charges over the suppression of the 1991 Shiite and Kurdish uprisings; the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988; the launching of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war; and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. He is currently being held under tight security at Camp Cropper, a US military detention centre at Baghdad’s former international airport, according to a humanitarian organisation. Saddam was captured by US forces on December 13, after he was found hiding in a hole on a farm near his northern hometown of Tikrit.
