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One of
the first men to be tried will be a cousin of Mr.
Hussein's, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical
Ali for his role in poison-gas attacks that killed
thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980's,
officials say.
Another will be Barzan al-Tikriti, a half brother of
Mr. Hussein's, who served early in his rule as
deputy head of the secret police. Officials say the
most serious charge against him will involve
ordering the razing of a Shiite village north of
Baghdad, and the killing of scores of men there,
after a failed assassination attempt against Mr.
Hussein in 1982.
Nearly two years after American troops captured
Baghdad, twin courtrooms built for the trials in
Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone are nearly
ready, and investigating judges are close to
completing dossiers summarizing the evidence for the
first cases, officials say.
Although American legal experts have helped prepare
the cases, the trials will be conducted before a
special Iraqi tribunal, not before an international
court of the kind set up in The Hague for the former
Yugoslavia.
The Iraqi officials, speaking on condition they not
be identified, say Mr. Hussein will not go on trial
until the cases against his principal associates
have been completed, perhaps not until well into
next year.
Bakhtiar Amin, the human rights minister, said in an
interview that court officials would use the cases
against Mr. Hussein's associates to establish
"command responsibility" for the atrocities
committed under his rule, building evidence tying
him to decisions that led to the deaths of hundreds
of thousands of Iraqis.
Mr. Hussein, who is in solitary confinement at Camp
Cropper, the American military detention center near
Baghdad's airport, has been meeting recently with
lawyers appointed by his family, according to a
Western legal expert who discussed the trials on
Wednesday. Captured by American troops in December
2003 near his hometown, Tikrit, Mr. Hussein became
eligible for legal representation after a brief
court appearance last July with the other 11 top
leaders. But Iraqi officials said it was months
before any Iraqi lawyers made formal bids to
represent him.
Now, the legal expert said, Mr. Hussein has 10 Iraqi
lawyers and as many as 25 foreign lawyers, any of
whom will have the right to join his legal team at
trial.
Mr. Hussein's wife, Sajida, fled Iraq before the
American invasion with two daughters and took up
residence in a lavish mansion in the Jordan.
Her spokesmen have said that she has appointed
lawyers from Belgium, Britain, France, Jordan,
Lebanon and Tunisia, among other countries, and that
they will challenge the legitimacy of the special
tribunal to try Mr. Hussein, arguing that his
actions as president were covered by his immunity as
head of state.
The Western legal expert, who has been closely
involved in preparing the cases, said all 12
prisoners had been meeting regularly with lawyers.
He said the meetings were not held in the presence
of American guards, and that there were no
constraints on what was discussed.
Previously, Iraqi officials had said the detainees
were not allowed access to radio, television or
newspapers, severely limiting their knowledge of
developments in Iraq.
Asked if the meetings raised the possibility that
the lawyers could act as couriers for messages from
Mr. Hussein and the other detainees to the armed
groups that have spread a wide insurgency across
Iraq, the expert said it could not be ruled out.
"It's possible, but how do you stop that?" he said.
"There have to be some sacrosanct aspects to the
attorney-client privilege."
The expert, guarding his anonymity partly to ensure
a low profile for the role play in the tribunal by
Western advisers, set out a schedule for the first
trials that suggested that it could be summer before
proceedings reach the point where the tribunal
begins to hear in detail of the brutalities
inflicted under Mr. Hussein.
Before the trials can begin, he said, a team of 400
Iraqis working for the tribunal - backed by 50
mainly American lawyers and investigators in a
support group known as the Regime Crimes Liaison
Office - must hand in dossiers outlining the
evidence against defendants to the five-judge panels
that will preside at the trials. Investigators have
spent much of the past year sifting through tons of
seized documents, interviewing witnesses and
reviewing evidence gathered by forensic teams from
at least 12 mass graves.
The transfer of the dossiers to the tribunal, called
a referral, will come within the next few weeks, the
expert said. Then the judges will set a trial date,
probably quite promptly, he said.
Some lawyers involved have already said that when
the trials begin, they will argue that the court is
illegal because it was set up by the American
occupation authority last year, before Iraq resumed
formal sovereignty. That issue would go to a
nine-judge Iraqi appellate court, which would have
to rule before the trials could proceed, the expert
said.
Arrangements have been made for television relays to
carry the trials live to Iraqi and worldwide
audiences, according to the expert. He said the
courtrooms would include seating for reporters and a
public gallery to which ordinary Iraqis will be
admitted first come first served.
Security will include screens or curtains to protect
witnesses unwilling to be seen in open court.
Although courts are in the Green Zone, a maze of
checkpoints manned by Iraqis and Americans has
already been set up.
One of Mr. Hussein's top associates is not likely to
be tried because of his health problems, the Iraqi
officials say. He is Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, Mr.
Hussein's prime minister after he seized power in
1979 and opened a bloody purge of the governing
Baath Party. Mr. Zubaydi, in his late 60's, is the
oldest of the 12 Camp Cropper detainees. Officials
say he is suffering from severe heart trouble that
traces back to two bypass operations before Mr.
Hussein's ouster, and that American doctors treating
him do not expect him to recover.
Mr. Zubaydi has been under investigation for his
role in the purge, which involved the execution of
dozens of people shortly after Mr. Hussein declared
himself president.
The Iraqi officials say some detainees have tried to
win their freedom or avoid the death penalty by
promising cooperation.
Early in the tribunal's existence, officials said
two of those willing to give evidence against Mr.
Hussein was Tariq Aziz, a former deputy prime
minister, and Sultan Hashem Ahmed, defense minister
during the American-led invasion in the spring of
2003. Mr. Hashem was the general who met with
American commanders on Iraq's border with Kuwait in
March 1991 to sign terms ending the Persian Gulf
war.
These overtures took on new significance when Ayad
Allawi, the former Baathist serving as interim prime
minister, moved to control the court by dismissing
senior tribunal officials and appointing his own
loyalists. One of those dismissed, Salem Chalabi,
the tribunal's director, said Dr. Allawi wanted to
free some defendants, or lessen the charges against
them, to form a lever with other former Baathists
active in the insurgency. Dr. Allawi has
acknowledged meeting secretly with such men in
efforts to break the tide of war.
But Mr. Amin, the human rights minister, said there
would be no compromise in the case of Mr. Aziz, who
was Iraq's main diplomatic emissary for at least 15
years before Mr. Hussein's overthrow.
Mr. Amin, a Kurd, said Mr. Aziz, a Christian, was
deeply implicated in Mr. Hussein's crimes against
Iraq's Kurdish minority, and in particular in the
killing of thousands of Kurdish Christians. "I am
opposed to anyone with blood on his hands, and who
has been involved in genocide and other atrocities,
being released," Mr. Amin said.
One concern has been that Mr. Hussein could try to
use his court appearances to as a political
platform, in the way that Slobodan Milosevic, the
former Yugoslav president, has done in years of
testimony at The Hague. At his brief court
appearance last July, Mr. Hussein described the
Kuwait invasion in 1990 as a just assertion of
Iraq's national interest and condemned the American
occupation. He claimed he was still Iraq's lawful
president, and told the judge that he should be
ashamed of himself for dishonoring his country's
leader.
But the Western legal expert said Iraqi court
procedures, based on civil law, should prevent
attempts to turn the proceedings into political
theater. First, he said, the defense will be handled
by lawyers, and not, as in Mr. Milosevic's case, by
the defendant. Beyond that, the wide powers granted
to the judges to select witnesses and direct
prosecution and defense lawyers, as well as the
absence of the adversary system used in American
trials, would make the tribunal's hearings "more
expeditious" than the tribunal in The Hague.
"You're not going to see a Johnnie Cochrane
cross-examining somebody in the manner of the O. J.
case," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com
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