Saddam's trial creates a new legal model
Tom Parker NYT Thursday, July 8, 2004
International law
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut I spent six months in Baghdad in 2003 working with Iraqis to devise a strategy for bringing Saddam Hussein and his cronies to account. Saddam's appearance before an Iraqi judge last week was the culmination of a remarkable collaboration between the American-led coalition and Iraqi jurists. It also marked an important new stage in the evolution of international justice.
For probably the first time in history, a country will put its former leaders on trial under international criminal law in a locally constituted court.
Unlike its UN sponsored cousin-courts in The Hague and Sierra Leone, the Iraqi Special Tribunal empowers local officials to bring the perpetrators of atrocity crimes to trial. International financing will go where it will do the most good - toward rebuilding Iraq's judiciary and ensuring that the victims of Saddam's regime are finally heard.
The coalition authority spent almost six months formulating tribunal plans with Iraqis. It organized working groups and conferences on subjects as diverse as truth and reconciliation commissions and forensic anthropology.
In these sessions, which were open to the public, one message came across loud and clear: Iraqis wanted to see Saddam tried by Iraqis. Coalition advisers worked closely with Iraqi lawyers to ensure that the tribunal statute we created was in harmony with the latest developments in international law....cont'd >
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