Thursday, February 02, 2006

Defendants boycott Saddam trial

The trial of Saddam Hussein and seven others has resumed without any of the defendants in court. Proceedings had been delayed for two hours on Thursday morning as the eight defendants issued a boycott threat.





Only three sat in court on Wednesday. The defence says the new Kurdish chief judge is biased and is determined to deliver a guilty verdict. Defence lawyers have refused to appear as well, with the court appointing counsel to take their place.

After hearing that the judge was allegedly tortured by Saddam's security agents I really thought this trial could not get any more ridiculous. I was wrong. Today the circus went one better. No defendants or defence lawyers at all !

I suppose they could go one better and just send everyone home, they might as well.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

How does a contempt of court charge work over there????

Gary

February 02, 2006 6:36 pm  
Blogger Mea said...

Gary, you may find these two pages interesting:

1. The Statute to the Court (http://www.cpa-iraq.org/human_rights/Statute.htm) which merely requires the upholding of Iraqi Criminal Procedure Law...

2. An article with an argument based on Iraqi Criminal Procedure Law (http://www.law.case.edu/saddamtrial/)

February 02, 2006 7:21 pm  
Blogger Alex said...

It does not matter if they are present or not it is what the people who are telling the story of torture and suffering that you should be saying to yourself how can the world live with itself and have people like Hussein in power.
"There is a verse in the Qur'an that says whoever kills one soul kills all souls. And whoever brings life to people brings life to a nation."

February 03, 2006 4:13 am  
Blogger Unknown said...

Alex, I was asking myself that a long time ago. At the monster's peak, the response from the U.S. government was to increase support for him.

Hussein, however, is no longer in power. Islam Karimov (to name but one) is in power and is currently the recipient of U.S. and British military and diplomatic support.

February 03, 2006 4:27 am  
Blogger _H_ said...

I think it does matter Alex if the defendant is there or not . I hold the same view as Amnesty International on such things

'Anyone accused of an offence, however serious, has the right to be presumed innocent unless proven guilty and to have their guilt or innocence established in a regular court of law in a fair trial.'

I know its a tough call but Saddam has been tried by Media and remember he is not being tried for all is 'crimes' just one crime , the deaths of 148 people and thats it . all the other crimes have been left behind for they can mainly all be linked to the west and our support for him .

I was not witness to the deaths of these 148 people and neither were most Iraqis or all of the newspapers that quote so quickly what happened , so evidence is important . I know he was an evil dictator but remember we claim to have removed him to replace him with something better , if we are going to deny him a fair trial then what makes us better than Saddam ?

if we wanted unfair trials and justice without defence then we could have just left saddam in place.

February 03, 2006 7:43 am  
Blogger Unknown said...

if we wanted unfair trials and justice without defence then we could have just left saddam in place.

Exactly.

February 03, 2006 2:28 pm  

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