|
How, they wonder, does this monster warrant a trial
when he summarily dished out bloody injustice for so
many years? And how come the trial looks — to their
eyes, anyway — so American? Don’t get them started
on Ramsey Clark, the former Carter-era attorney
general who has joined Hussein’s defense.
And a few worry that somehow — perhaps because of
secrets he might harbor about the Americans who were
once his benefactors, or maybe just because evil men
seem to evade justice — Hussein will escape
execution.
Prosecutors have accused him in the killing of 2
million people. His trial was scheduled to resume
this morning.
For now, he is standing trial in Baghdad on a more
specific charge of slaughtering 148 men and teenage
boys in the Shiite stronghold of Al Dujail in 1982 —
his response to an assassination attempt. That case
was chosen as the first partly because much of the
evidence is so black-and-white. His signature
appears on the death sentences.
Later he could stand trial for murdering prominent
religious leaders in 1974, for slaughtering the
Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983, for gassing the town
of Halabja in 1988 and killing 5,000, for the 1990
invasion of Kuwait, for the brutal suppression of
the 1991 uprising prompted by the first Gulf War,
for 30 years of assassinating political partisans,
and for the 20-year “Anfal” campaign of displacing
Kurds and forcing the “Arabization” of their
oil-rich territories.
In Kansas City, Iraqis he terrorized watch with
revived anger as Hussein gripes and poses, as he
scribbles out poetry in court that declares “truth
is our characteristic … lying is theirs.” They
notice how he sits, rather than standing like Iraqi
criminal defendants traditionally have done. They
take note of his suit, and what looks like expensive
tailoring.
And then they catch themselves picking up on such
details.
“It’s all so ridiculous,” said Suad Alnahi, a
40-year-old Shiite woman from Basra who spent a year
in one of his jails. “There should be no trial, or
it should be over like that,” she added, snapping
her fingers.
Her entire family spent a year in prison after her
brother, a political dissident, fled the country in
the 1980s. At times she was hung by her wrists and
subjected to electrical shocks, she said, or thrown
in a closet where she could only tremble as other
torture victims screamed. She worried that she would
be raped.
So when she sees Hussein chewing out the judge for
not ordering the elevator fixed or watches the
months slip away as his delays extend the trial and,
likely, his life, she finds the whole situation
absurd.
“Everybody knows he did all these things,” she said.
“All this is just for show for this crazy man who
still thinks he is president.”
Sitting in the living room of her apartment, her
youngest daughter squirming in her lap, she
remembers with her husband, Hassan, and her son Ali
watching on television when the Saddam Hussein
statue in Baghdad tumbled after Americans took the
city. Then months later a friend called Ali at 3
a.m., telling him to turn on the TV. Hussein had
been pulled from a hole in the ground.
“I got everybody in the house up to watch,” recalled
Ali, a 19-year-old gas station attendant. “At first
we thought it might just be someone who looks like
him. But then we were convinced and that made us
very happy.”
That glee has faded. Hassan Alnahi can’t fathom why
Clark is helping the despot.
“No person, at least no educated person, could not
be aware of all the people he has killed,” said the
44-year-old cab driver. “Why would you help him?”
To expatriate Iraqis, it’s more than just maddening
that a man who denied others justice — denied them
simple human dignity — can bellow on at his own
public trial. Even the fact that he is in court —
rather than surrendered to the rough justice of the
streets — raises the possibility in some minds that
he might somehow beat the rap.
Watching on satellite television, Herish Askari, a
Kurdish Sunni, grew concerned that Hussein was being
tried initially just in the Dujail case.
“When there’s so much that he’s done, I don’t know
why they would focus just on that one,” said Askari,
a Kurd who lost a brother in the Anfal campaign in
1988 and who came to the United States in 1996. “I’m
sure he will be executed eventually, but still you
worry that something could go wrong.”
Consider the videotaped testimony submitted in late
November of former secret police officer Wadah
al-Sheik, who was supposed to be a link in
establishing Hussein’s orders for the Dujail
killings. It appeared to be poor ammunition for the
prosecution’s case. “I did not hear anything direct
from Saddam Hussein,” said Sheik in testimony taped
in October before his death from cancer.
At the Huda cafe on Independence Avenue, Ali Al-Rubaley
speculated about the possibility that Hussein might
escape responsibility for his genocidal ways.
Maybe the evidence won’t meet the Iraqi Special
Tribunal’s American-like standards of proof, he
said, and the jailed dictator will receive just a
life sentence. Then, just maybe, Hussein might
arrange an escape.
Al-Rubaley acknowledges that few prisoners have been
guarded as closely as Hussein. Still, he imagines
that the captive may hold some leverage over his
captors. After all, he was a sort of American ally
against the Iranians in the 1980s and Al-Rubaley can
imagine Hussein holds information that could
embarrass the Americans.
“You can never count Saddam out,” he said. “I hope
he will die. But I can never be sure.”
www.kansascity.com
Top |
®
