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December 31, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, California ,-- Iraqi-Americans
reacted with sadness to the execution of Saddam
Hussein Saturday, calling the former Iraqi
president's death by hanging early this morning
Baghdad time a missed opportunity for justice.
An Iraqi tribunal set up by the U.S. government had
convicted Hussein of murder in the killings of 148
Shiite Muslims from the Iraqi town of Dujail, where
assassins had tried to kill Hussein in 1982.
The crime, while severe, is actually one of his
smaller-scale atrocities. In 1988, Hussein's
government began the Anfal campaign of ethnic
cleansing against the Kurds of northern Iraq. More
than 180,000 Kurds were killed, many of them lined
up and stripped before being machine gunned and
dumped into trenches.
"As a Kurd, I don't think Saddam should have been
executed right now," Kani Xulam, founder of the
Washington-based American Kurdish Information
Network, told IPS.
"They say suffering brings about compassion," he
said, "but if suffering is not validated, is not
honored, is not heard, then people turn into cynics.
Those are the issues that the Kurds feel, that I as
a Kurdish activist feel."
In death, Xulam said, Hussein will escape justice
for gassing Kurdish civilians with chemical weapons,
as well as the brutal murders of thousands of
Shiites who rose up against his regime at George
Bush Sr.'s urging after the 1991 Gulf War. Those
killings, taken together, account for most of those
buried in mass graves unearthed after the US
military invaded Iraq and toppled the regime in
2003.
Xulam said he was hoping that the public airing of
evidence of Hussein's crimes would bring closure to
his victims and greater understanding to Iraqi
society as a whole. Now, he said, such closure may
be impossible.
"Justice is not being served as far as I can see,"
he said. "There's a miscarriage of justice; 142
killings is a tiny speck in the larger crimes that
he has committed. Imagine if Hitler were alive to be
prosecuted. A lot of details of his crimes would
have come out. Hitler committed suicide, but Saddam
was captured and I think this trial should have
continued."
Shakir Mustafa, a Baghdad-born professor at Boston
University, agreed with Xulam's analysis.
"During the trial, Saddam sounded really ready to
provide such details," Dr. Mustafa said. "For the
Dujail case, for example, Saddam said 'Yes, I wanted
these men executed because they committed a crime.
They wanted to assassinate me.' He volunteered these
and other details and I think the Iraqi people would
be interested in hearing about what he says he had
done for Iraq's security."
Another reason Hussein's hanging is unlikely to
bring closure to his victims, Mustafa said, is the
fact that his trial was carried out under an
unpopular US occupation. The trial "lacks
legitimacy," he said.
"[It's] being done by an occupying force and
government that very much lacks legitimacy itself,
so that closure, I don't think its coming," he
added.
From the beginning, observers note, Hussein's trial
had been directly supervised by US officials. It was
funded by a 138-million-dollar grant from Congress
and by a large staff of foreigners working out of
the US Embassy in Baghdad called the Regimes Crime
Unit.
Previous key moments of Hussein's trial had
coincided closely with the needs of the George W.
Bush administration. In August, the trial recessed
only to reconvene on Sept. 11, the anniversary of
the al Qaeda terror attacks on the United States.
And Hussein was sentenced to death shortly before
the US midterm congressional elections in November.
Scott Horton, the chair of the International Law
Committee of the New York City Bar Association, who
worked on the trial, told IPS there was little doubt
that the death sentence was intentionally handed
down on the eve of the elections.
He said Washington exercised especially tight
control over the tribunal's schedule.
"Access to the courtroom is controlled by the
Americans, security is controlled by the Americans,
and the Americans have custody over the defendants
who must be produced before the trial can go
forward, so whether they have the trial on day x or
day y depends on the Americans giving their okay,"
he said.
"What is really being presented here is the
narrative of people in power, the victors not the
victims," Professor Mustafa said. "The Americans,
not the Iraqis. Not people like me and my relatives
who lost loved ones, but people who are deciding
things in Iraq now."
Some observers believe Washington closely managed
the trial in order to avoid having Hussein reveal
damaging secrets about his past relations with US
presidents, especially Ronald Reagan.
In November 1983, Reagan removed Iraq from the US
government's official list of nations that "support
international terrorism." That opened the door to
full diplomatic and economic cooperation between
Iraq and the United States.
The next month, Reagan he sent an emissary to
Baghdad bearing a personal letter for Hussein. That
emissary was none other than recently departed
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
A declassified official note at the time read:
"Saddam Hussein showed obvious pleasure with the
President's letter and Rumsfeld's visits in his
remarks."
Rumsfeld also met Hussein's foreign minister Tariq
Aziz. According to a State Department memo made
available by the nonprofit National Security Archive
in Washington, Rumsfeld told Aziz: "The United
States and Iraq share many common interests," and
the Reagan administration had a "willingness to do
more" to "help Iraq."
Throughout this period, the Reagan administration
largely ignored reports that Saddam Hussein was
using chemical weapons against the Iranian army and
against domestic Kurdish insurgents.
"While condemning Iraq's resort to chemical
weapons," a US government press release read, "the
United States finds the Iranian regime's
intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed
objective of eliminating the legitimate government
of Iraq to be inconsistent with accepted norms."
With Hussein's execution, his precise relationship
with the United States government during the Cold
War will go unexplored, as will any investigation
into possible US complicity with specific crimes.
Companies that sold chemical weapons and other
instruments of terror to Hussein are also likely off
the hook with his death.
"I think there are companies that supported Saddam
inside the US and Europe," the American Kurdish
Information Network's Kani Xulam told IPS. "My fear
now is that they will go scot-free."
IPS
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