E-Paper
The world is witness
Saddm was the legal president of Iraq when a war led to his overthrow. This war had no legal sanction and was not approved by UN.
Saddam Hussein’s trial and death sentence witnesses the intersection of two parallel lines. One flows from contemporary international law that places a premium on national sovereignty. In this stream, Mr Hussein was the recognised and legal President of Iraq when a war led to his overthrow. This war had no legal sanction and was, pointedly, not approved by the United Nations, whose permission is needed even to prosecute a war of self-defence. The judgment was, therefore, that of the victors. Critics have pointed out that the trial process itself was less than fair, though there is substantial evidence that a huge crime was committed in 1982 when 148 people of Dujail were executed after a sham trial for an alleged attempt on Mr Hussein’s life near the village. The prosecution claimed that there was enough evidence to pin the blame for the Dujail atrocity up the chain of command, to Mr Hussein himself. Mr Hussein’s criminal conduct included unprovoked wars on Iran and Kuwait, massacres of Iraq’s Kurdish and Shia communities and torture and execution of thousands of Iraqis whose loyalty he suspected.
The second stream flows from the Nuremburg trials of Nazi war criminals by the International Military Tribunal, set up by the victors of World War II. Since then, somewhat fitfully, a body of international law has emerged that refuses to accept national sovereignty as the basis for protecting criminal conduct of rulers. The process has grown apace since the end of the Cold War. It has witnessed the trials of Balkan war criminals under the UN-sponsored International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, and has seen the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. More recently, in 2002, an International Criminal Court was created on the basis of an agreement by 102 countries seeking to institutionalise the process. However, the US, China, Iraq, India and Russia have refused to accept the court and its processes. They believe that the court will interfere with national sovereignty and undertake politically motivated prosecutions of their citizens.
Whatever be the weaknesses of international law and its current institutions, few will disagree that the era where rulers could shield atrocities against their own citizens in the name of national sovereignty is over. Mr Hussein’s trial may not have been run on text-book lines, but few can deny the importance or the justness of the verdict.
