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Ignoring U.S., Chalabi Pursues attempt to
fire Hussein judge
27.7.2005
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BAGHDAD, Iraq,
July 26 - Aides to Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad
Chalabi said Tuesday that they planned to move
forward with demands for the dismissal of the judge
who has led the investigations of the mass killings
committed under Saddam Hussein, ignoring American
calls for restraint.
Ali Feisal, an aide to Mr. Chalabi, said the judge,
Raid Juhi, was the most prominent of 19 judges,
prosecutors and officials on a new list of those to
be purged from the Iraqi tribunal set up to try Mr.
Hussein and top officials of his government. All 19,
Mr. Feisal said, are former members of Mr. Hussein's
Baath Party and therefore legally ineligible to work
for the tribunal.
"Juhi's on the top of the list," Mr. Feisal said.
Mr. Juhi, 34, the tribunal's chief investigative
judge, is considered by American lawyers working
with the tribunal to be central to its work. While
handling the initial court appearance of Mr. Hussein
last July, Mr. Juhi met his defiance with a
stolidness that stunned Iraqis. |
Chief judge of the Iraq Special Tribunal Raid Juhi.
Photo : AP |
At one point Mr. Juhi interrupted Mr. Hussein as he
insisted he was still Iraq's lawful president. "Put
down 'Saddam Hussein, former president,' " he told
the court clerk.
On Monday the American attempt to head off Mr.
Chalabi was taken up by Zalmay Khalilzad, the new
American ambassador, who told reporters he had urged
senior Iraqis during his first round of official
talks here to prevent the damage a purge of the
tribunal's judges could inflict.
"It is important, and we have emphasized, and they
agree, that nothing is done that undermines or
weakens the independence of the tribunal," he said.
Mr. Juhi has refused to comment publicly on the
controversy. But other tribunal officials said they
believed that Mr. Chalabi, once the Pentagon's
favorite to be Iraq's first ruler after the fall of
Mr. Hussein, was using the issue of Mr. Juhi's
Baathist past as cover for a political maneuver
intended to protect Moktada al-Sadr, a volatile
Shiite cleric who is Mr. Chalabi's new political
partner.
The tribunal officials, who refused to be identified
out of fear for their jobs, said they believed that
Mr. Chalabi wanted to punish Mr. Juhi for his role
in 2003 in issuing a warrant for the arrest of Mr.
Sadr, who led two uprisings against American troops
last year, on murder charges.
The warrant, held in abeyance by Iraqi officials as
part of the deal that ended Mr. Sadr's rebellion,
charged him with ordering the killing of Ayatollah
Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a prominent Shiite cleric,
within hours of Ayatollah Khoei's return to Iraq
from exile in April 2003.
Mr. Chalabi, who lacks a mass political following in
Iraq, formed his partnership with Mr. Sadr for the
elections held in January and emerged as one of the
main brokers in the formation of the transitional
government that now holds power. Iraqi politicians
say they believe that he aims to become prime
minister after the next round of elections in
December for a full, five-year government, an
objective that would draw heavily on his
relationship with Mr. Sadr.
Ten days ago, Mr. Juhi said he had completed his
investigation of the first of the cases against Mr.
Hussein: the killing of 150 men and youths from the
town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after a failed
assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein in 1982.
The announcement set the stage for the Dujail trial,
involving Mr. Hussein and three associates, which is
expected to begin in September.
Mr. Juhi's role in the Dujail case ended, at least
in a legal sense, with his referring it to the trial
court. But he remains deeply involved in the
investigations of several other cases involving Mr.
Hussein, all of which could eventually go to trial.
The concern among American officials is that the
judge's dismissal could disrupt those
investigations, which include the so-called Anfal
campaign of the late 1980's, in which tens of
thousands of Iraqi Kurds were killed in poison gas
attacks, and the repression of a Shiite rebellion in
southern Iraq after the Persian Gulf war of 1991,
which ended with as many as 150,000 victims shot
dead and bulldozed into mass graves.
Beyond the risk of disrupting those investigations,
American and Iraqi officials have said they are
concerned that what seems to be Mr. Chalabi's
determination to purge the tribunal of many of its
top judges and officials could undermine its
credibility just as it prepares for the Dujail trial
and strengthen the arguments of those, including
defense lawyers, who have contended that the
tribunal lacks legitimacy under Iraqi law.
Those opponents have said the tribunal, created by
the American occupation authority in March of last
year to try top officials of the fallen government
for crimes against humanity, is a violation of
international law, including a provision in the
Geneva conventions that the opponents have
interpreted as prohibiting an occupation force from
creating new judicial institutions.
The American statute creating the tribunal contained
a clause barring any former Baathist from serving on
its staff.
But American officials, once fervent supporters of
the wide-ranging vetting process known as de-Baathification,
shifted more than a year ago to encouraging former
Baathists to return to government, unless they had
committed crimes. Now, eager to undermine the
Sunni-led insurgency, they favor a more lenient
policy that bars only the top four ranks of
Baathists, a stipulation that would spare Mr. Juhi
and other officials at the tribunal.
The tribunal officials on Mr. Chalabi's list say
they joined the party only because they were
required to when they entered the colleges that were
gateways to the legal and judicial professions under
Mr. Hussein.
The Americans tried to head off a showdown when Mr.
Chalabi made his intentions known earlier this
month, appealing to the head of the transitional
government, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, to
intervene to halt the dismissals.
American officials, who insisted on anonymity
because of the political sensitivities involved,
said Mr. Jaafari had agreed that Mr. Chalabi should
be curbed, but had declined to act unilaterally. Mr.
Chalabi then secured the dismissal of a first group
of tribunal officials, including the executive
director, the head of security and the head of a
witness protection program.
As the leader of one of two Shiite religious parties
that head the government, both of which lost
thousands of members to Mr. Hussein's atrocities,
Mr. Jaafari, American officials said, was cautious
in urging any step that ran counter to Shiite
feelings about former Baathists.
The prime minister's response has been to urge the
transitional Parliament to enact legislation to
establish the tribunal as a court under Iraqi law
and to consider shifting it to the same standard set
for all other government entities, which bars only
the top ranks of former Baathists.
So far, the legislators appear to have reached no
conclusion, but Mr. Feisal, the Chalabi aide who is
the de-Baathification committee's executive
director, said he was confident that there would be
no change in the rule barring former Baathists - and
that Mr. Juhi would be dismissed.
www.nytimes.com
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