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ALI
HASSAN MAJID, also known as Chemical Ali, appears in
an undisclosed Baghdad courtroom in December, and
will probably be one of the first of Saddam's top
officials to be tried this spring.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials say the
long-awaited legal reckoning for Saddam Hussein and
his associates will begin this spring with televised
trials for at least two of the top 12 government
members in U.S. military custody, and that
prosecutors will demand the death penalty for those
judged guilty of the worst crimes.
One of the first men to be tried will be a cousin of
Saddam's, Ali Hassan Majid, known as Chemical Ali
for his alleged role in poison-gas attacks that
killed thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s,
officials say.
Another will be Barzan Tikriti, a half-brother of
Saddam, 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
Saddam in 1982.
Nearly two years after U.S. 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 U.S. 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 Saddam 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 Saddam'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.
Saddam, who is in solitary confinement at Camp
Cropper, the U.S. 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 last
week.
Captured by U.S. troops in December 2003 near his
hometown, Tikrit, Saddam became eligible for legal
representation after a brief court appearance in
July with the other 11 top leaders. Iraqi officials
said it was months before any Iraqi lawyers made
formal bids to represent him.
Now, the legal expert said, Saddam 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.
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 U.S. 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.
The expert 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 during Saddam's rule.
Before the trials can begin, he said, a team of 400
Iraqis working for the tribunal -- backed by 50
mainly U.S. 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 already have said that when
the trials begin, they will argue that the court is
illegal because it was set up by the U.S. 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 trial
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 already
has been set up.
One of Saddam's top associates is not likely to be
tried because of his health problems, the Iraqi
officials say. He is Muhammad Hamza Zubaydi,
Saddam's prime minister after he seized power in
1979 and allegedly opened a bloody purge of the
governing Baath Party.
Zubaydi, in his late 60s, 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 Saddam's ouster and
that American doctors treating him do not expect him
to recover.
Zubaydi has been under investigation for his alleged
role in the purge, which involved the execution of
dozens of people immediately after Saddam 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 Saddam
included Tariq Aziz, a former deputy prime minister,
and Sultan Hashem Ahmed, defense minister during the
U.S.-led invasion in the spring of 2003.
Hashem was the general who met with U.S. commanders
on Iraq's border with Kuwait in March 1991 to sign
terms ending the first Persian Gulf war.
These overtures took on new significance when Iyad
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 Allawi wanted to free some
defendants, or lessen the charges against them, to
form a lever with other former Baathists active in
the insurgency. Allawi has acknowledged meeting
secretly with such men in efforts to break the tide
of war.
Amin, the human rights minister, said there would be
no compromise in the case of Aziz, who was Iraq's
main diplomatic emissary for at least 15 years
before Saddam's overthrow.
Amin, a Kurd, said Aziz, a Christian, was deeply
implicated in crimes against Iraq's Kurdish
minority, and in particular in the killing of
thousands of Kurdish Christians.
www.nytimes.com
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