The deposed president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein was tried by the Iraqi Interim Government for crimes against humanity committed during his time in office.
The Coalition Provisional Authority voted to create the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST), consisting of five Iraqi judges, on 9 December 2003, to try Saddam and his aides for charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide dating back to the early 1980s.
Saddam was captured by U.S. forces on 13 December 2003. He remained in custody by U.S. forces at Camp Cropper in Baghdad, along with eleven senior Ba'athist officials. Particular attention was paid during the trial to activities in violent campaigns against the Kurds in the north during the Iran–Iraq War, against the Shiites in the south in 1991 and 1999 to put down revolts, and in Dujail after a failed assassination attempt against Saddam on 8 July 1982, during the Iran–Iraq War. Saddam asserted in his defense that he had been unlawfully overthrown and was still president of Iraq.
The first trial began before the Iraqi Special Tribunal on 19 October 2005. Saddam and seven other defendants were tried for crimes against humanity with regard to events that took place after a failed assassination attempt in Dujail in 1982 by members of the Islamic Dawa Party (see also human rights abuses in Iraq under Saddam Hussein). A second and separate trial began on 21 August 2006, trying Saddam and six co-defendants for genocide during the Anfal campaign against the Kurds in northern Iraq.
On 5 November 2006, Saddam was sentenced to death by hanging. On 26 December, Saddam's appeal was rejected and the death sentence upheld. No further appeals were taken and Saddam was ordered executed within 30 days of that date. The date and place of the execution were secret until the sentence was carried out. Saddam was executed by hanging on 30 December 2006. With his death, all other charges were dropped.
Critics viewed the trial as a show trial that did not meet international standards on the right to a fair trial. Amnesty International stated that the trial was "unfair," and Human Rights Watch judged that Saddam's execution "follows a flawed trial and marks a significant step away from the rule of law in Iraq."Iraq: Saddam Hussein Put to Death , Human Rights Watch (30-12-2006). Several months before the trial, Salem Chalabi, the former head of the Iraq Special Tribunal (which was established to try Hussein), accused interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi of pushing for a hasty show trial and execution, stating: "Show trials followed by speedy executions may help the interim government politically in the short term but will be counterproductive for the development of democracy and the rule of law in Iraq in the long term."
First hearing: 1 July 2004 The 67-year-old former president, Saddam Hussein, appeared confident and defiant throughout the 46-minute hearing. Alternating between listening to and gesturing at judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, he questioned the legitimacy of the tribunal. He called the court a "play" aimed at increasing George W. Bush's chances of winning the U.S. presidential election."Saddam defiant in court" , 2 July 2004, Al-Jazeera. He emphatically rejected charges against him. "This is all theater. The real criminal is Bush", he stated."Know Nothing, Do Nothing" , The American Spectator, 11 October 2005. When asked by the judge to identify himself in his first appearance before an Iraqi judge (three of the five judges and the prosecutor were never identified nor photographed for security reasons), he answered, "You are an Iraqi, you know who I am.""You are an Iraqi. You know who I am", The Guardian, 20 October 2005.
Also during the arraignment, Saddam defended Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait and referred to Kuwaitis as "dogs" who were trying to turn the women of Iraq into "two-penny whores", which led to an admonition from the judge for using coarse language in court. Later on 1 July, Kuwait's information minister Abul-Hassan said the crude language was expected: "This is how he was raised".Saddam upsets Kuwaiti 'dogs' at Mail & Guardian online
Although no attorneys for Saddam were present at the 1 July hearing, his first wife, Sajida Talfah, hired a multinational team of attorneys, headed by Jordanian Mohammad Rashdan and including Ayesha Gaddafi (Libya), Curtis Doebbler (United States), Emmanuel Ludot (France) and Marc Henzelin (Switzerland). Towards the end of the first hearing, the deposed president refused to sign the legal document confirming his understanding of the charges.
Pre-trial events In a leaked transcript of a February 2003 meeting between George W. Bush and Spanish Prime Minister José Aznar, Bush expressed a willingness to have Saddam tried at the International Tribunal of Justice in The Hague.Wikisource:Bush-Aznar memo
In December 2004, Clive Stafford Smith prepared a 50-page brief for the defense team arguing that Saddam Hussein should be tried in the U.S. under U.S. criminal law.Saddam bids to challenge case in US (The Sunday Times, 19 December 2004)
The London-based Arab-language daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported in early May 2005 that during a meeting with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "known only to a few Iraqi officials in Jordan", Saddam refused an offer of release if he made a televised request to armed groups for a ceasefire with allied forces. The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, quoting an unnamed senior UK government source, had reported two weeks earlier that Iraqi insurgents were being offered a "deal" whereby Saddam would receive a more lenient sentence if they gave up their attacks.
On 17 June 2005, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of France Roland Dumas and former President of Algeria Ahmed Ben Bella announced the formation, under their joint chairmanship, of an international Emergency Committee for Iraq, with a main objective of ensuring fair trials for Saddam and the other former Ba'ath Party officials being tried with him.
On 18 July 2005, Saddam was charged by the Special Tribunal with the first of an expected series of charges, relating to the mass killings of the inhabitants of the village of Dujail in 1982 after a failed assassination attempt against him.
On 8 August 2005, Saddam's family announced that they had dissolved the Jordan-based legal team and had appointed Khalil al-Duleimi, the only Iraq-based member, as the sole legal counsel. In an interview broadcast on Iraqi television on 6 September 2005, Iraqi president Jalal Talabani said that he had directly extracted confessions from Saddam that he had ordered mass killings and other "crimes" during his regime and that "he deserved to die." Two days later, Saddam's lawyer denied that he confessed.
Saddam's defense repeatedly argued for a delay in the proceedings, insisting that it had not been given evidence secured by the prosecution, had not been given sufficient time to review any prosecution documents, but these submissions received no response from the court. International human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and UN bodies such as the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the Iraqi Special Tribunal and its legal process did not meet international standards for a fair trial. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan declined to support the proceeding, expressing similar concerns over fairness as well as over the possibility of a death sentence in the case.
Al-Dujail trial: 19 October 2005 Iraqi authorities put Saddam and seven other former Iraqi officials on trial on 19 October 2005, four days after the 15 October 2005 referendum on the new Iraqi constitution. The tribunal specifically charged the defendants with the killing of 148 Shiites from Dujail, in retaliation for the failed assassination attempt of 8 July 1982. Supporters of Saddam protested against the trial in Tikrit.Demonstrations, statements, supporting Saddam After the charges were read to them, all eight defendants pleaded not guilty. While initially open to the public, the trial was closed to them on 15 March 2006, after Saddam began making political statements on the stand and an argument began between him and the presiding judge.
Saddam's co-defendants were: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, his half-brother and former chief of intelligence Taha Yassin Ramadan, former Vice-President Awad Hamed al-Bandar Al-Sa'dun, a former chief judge Abdullah Kadhem Roweed Al-Musheikhi, Al-Dujail Ba'ath party official Mizher Abdullah Roweed Al-Musheikhi, (son of Abdullah Kadhem), Al-Dujail Ba'ath Party official Ali Daeem Ali, Al-Dujail Ba'ath Party official Mohammed Azawi Ali, Al-Dujail Ba'ath Party official
As in his pre-trial appearance, at the opening of the 19 October trial, Saddam appeared defiant. He rejected the tribunal's legitimacy and independence from the control of the foreign occupation. "I do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect to its people, and I retain my constitutional right as the president of Iraq", Saddam declared. He added, "Neither do I recognize the body that has designated and authorized you, nor the aggression because all that has been built on false basis is false." When the judge asked for his name, Saddam refused, stating "I am the president of Iraq". He returned the question, asking Kurdish judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, "Who are you? I want to know who you are." When Amin addressed Saddam as "the former president", Saddam objected emphatically.
The first session of Saddam's trial lasted three hours. The court adjourned the case until 28 November 2005, as some of the witnesses were too frightened to attend, and to allow the defense more time to study evidence. During an interview with the Arab news agency Al Arabiya following the opening of the trial, Saddam's eldest daughter Raghad branded the court a "farce" and claimed that her father behaved like a "lion" during the proceedings. "He would be a lion even when caged. Every honest person who knows Saddam knows that he is firm and powerful."
The trial was adjourned on 28 November 2005 by Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin to allow time to find replacement lawyers for several of the defendants; Attorney Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi, charged with the defense of Awad Hamed al-Bandar, was abducted from his office by gunmen on 20 October 2005, and found shot dead near his office a few hours later. On 8 November 2005, attorney Adel al-Zubeidi, who had been representing Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan and Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid, was killed by three gunmen in Baghdad. Barazan Ibrahim's lawyer Thamer Hamoud al-Khuzaie was also wounded in the attack.