When Saddam goes to trial

Everyone agrees that Saddam Hussein, captured by U.S. forces on

Dec. 14, must stand trial to answer for his 25-year record of

criminality. To that end, the U.S. Justice Department will soon

send investigators to Iraq to lead the job of collecting and

organizing evidence against the former dictator. While this

investigation will be a difficult business, conducting the trial

itself will present even more daunting challenges _ and the Iraqi

people will need all the help they can get in meeting them.

They need the help because Iraq has not had a criminal justice

system worthy of the name for decades. Since 1979, Iraq was run

according to the whims and tyrannies of Saddam, his family and his

friends, not by an independent system of lawyers, judges and

juries. The signing of an interim Iraqi constitution on Monday is

an encouraging step forward, not an overnight transformation into a

nation with the rule of law.

Without outside help, Saddam’s trial will be conducted by

people wholly inexperienced in running even ordinary criminal

proceedings, much less the kind of proceeding that Saddam’s

trial will require. Tens of thousands of pages of documents will

have to be examined. Witnesses will have to be found and

interviewed. And while Hussein surely will be the most important

ex-government figure to stand trial, some of his top aides also may

be brought before the bar of justice, presenting challenges of

their own.

The Justice Department investigators can be a big help by

assembling and organizing documentary and forensic evidence, and

perhaps the U.S. civilian administration of L. Paul Bremer can help

supply logistical assistance if it goes out of business at the end

of June, as scheduled.

Additional help also should come from other countries, from the

United Nations and especially from recognized international jurists

and other experts in international law. Ideally, gangsters such as

Saddam would be brought before the International Criminal Court,

which was formed to deal with those accused of war crimes and

crimes against humanity. But Saddam will not go before the ICC,

partly because the Bush administration opposes it, mainly because

the Iraqis want to try Saddam themselves.

Probably the best solution is the kind of hybrid tribunal suggested

by Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor at the U.N. war

crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia. Such a court, as

Goldstone sees it, would be a mix of local and international judges

and prosecutors.

There are compelling reasons Saddam should receive a scrupulously

free, fair and open trial. The world _ not just the Iraqi people _

needs to know as much as possible about what Saddam did during his

25 years in office. Only a trial conducted according to

professional norms of justice can be relied on to portray

Saddam’s villainy in an orderly and comprehensive way. And

however despicable a person Saddam may be, he is entitled to more

than the star-chamber justice he meted out to his many victims.

The Bush administration wants Saddam’s trial to be held

before election day. Perhaps it can be held before November, but

the claims of electoral politics should not figure in the

scheduling. The important thing is that it be done by people who

can manage it in a professional fashion.

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service

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