Debate Rages Over Saddam Trial

A spokesman for a leading member of Iraq's Governing Council member said he thought Saddam Hussein could get a fair trial in Iraq, but war crimes legal experts voiced fears that an Iraqi-led tribunal would be a travesty of justice.

Those concerns were expressed as President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for a public trial that would be conducted in a manner to be determined by the Iraqi people, with no mention of outside participation.

Iraq's interim leaders recently approved a plan for a five-judge tribunal to hear cases involving war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Interim council members want that to be the forum for the trial of Saddam.

"I think the trial will be just and fair because all parties are interested in making it fair," Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for council member Ahmed Chalabi, told British Broadcasting Corp. TV. "It will also send the right message to have a trial conducted in Iraq by Iraqis to heal the wounds of those victims or the families of the victims."

In comments Monday, Mr. Bush did not explicitly endorse the Iraqi council's tribunal but promised a fair, public trial for Saddam.

According to CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk, "on both the timing of a trial and where it will take place, it appears that the Bush administration and the Iraqi Governing Council may not be reading from the same page about next steps."

Iraqi council members have suggested Saddam could be executed as soon as the death penalty, suspended for now, becomes legal again in Iraq. Asked Monday if the deposed president should face the death penalty, Mr. Bush said his "personal views, aren't important in this matter."

But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the United Nations could not support bringing the former dictator before a tribunal that might sentence him to death.

While dubbing the capture "a positive development because Saddam Hussein has cast a rather long shadow over developments and over the transition process," Annan stressed that any trial must meet international standards.

He reiterated the United Nations' longstanding opposition to the death penalty in any U.N.-sanctioned tribunal.

"As secretary-general, as the U.N., as an organization, we are not going to now turn around and support the death penalty," he said.

Several professional jurists, including a retired U.S. judge from the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, said Monday that without international expertise the court risks compromising its credibility at home and abroad. It would also miss an opportunity to create a historic record of the suffering of the Iraqi people under the dictatorship.

Critics of the proposed Iraqi court said that after three decades of isolation from developments in international law, Iraq isn't yet ready to hold fair legal proceedings in a complicated war crimes case.

In comparison, a local tribunal for war crimes in Bosnia was established only this year, eight years after the end of fighting and after the start of the trial in February 2002 of former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic at the U.N.-backed Yugoslav tribunal in The Hague.

"The Iraqi tribunal should be operated like an international court," said retired Yugoslav tribunal judge Patricia Wald, an American who examined the new Iraqi court's statute. "The worst possibility would be a truly Iraqi body with Iraqi jurists and purely American advisers."

"If international jurists are not involved, and I mean across the board, not just Americans, they run the risk of compromising their credibility," Wald said in a telephone interview from Washington.

Richard Dicker, the head of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, estimates the chance of Saddam receiving a fair trial under the current plan as zero.

"We have serious concerns about the tribunal that was created by the governing council in Iraq," Dicker said. "The process was conducted with zero transparency. The concern is that Iraqi judges and lawyers don't have the necessary experience, after three decades of Baath Party rule, to conduct the enormously complicated criminal proceedings that genocide and crimes against humanity require."

The experts agreed that the Iraqi people should be part of the proceedings, but that under the current political and economic conditions, they need all the help they can get and that there should be no rush to judgment.

"The decision on how and when to try Saddam, when it finally is made, will be as much about politics and diplomacy as it is about the law," said CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen.

Meanwhile, Israel is looking into whether Saddam Hussein committed war crimes when he fired Scud missiles at Israeli population centers in 1991, and whether it should seek compensation, an Israeli official said Tuesday.

Israeli legal experts discussed possible action at a meeting following Saddam's weekend capture. Saddam fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf war, causing damage but few casualties.

Elsewhere, Saddam's daughter Raghad said the ousted leader's family wants him tried by an international court. Raghad and her sister Rana are living in Amman, Jordan, where they were given asylum in July. Before the war, the two daughters had lived private lives and were seen by some as victims of Saddam, who ordered their husbands killed in 1996.