The People Vs. Saddam

Interim Iraqi leaders called Monday for Saddam Hussein to be tried under a nascent local court system and predicted his execution. U.S. allies agreed, but human rights advocates raised concerns.

Saddam was captured Saturday night in a raid by U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq. At least 300,000 people are believed to have been killed during his 23-year presidency, many of them buried in mass graves.

He also faces possible war crimes charges for the 1988 chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which 5,000 died, and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Iraq's interim government established a special tribunal Wednesday to try top members of Saddam's government for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Saddam's trial will begin "very soon, in the next few weeks," Mouwafak al-Rabii, a Shiite Muslim member of the Iraqi Governing Council, told The Associated Press. He added that Saddam could be executed swiftly if convicted.

Other council members said the televised trial would likely begin later, perhaps by summer.

But international watchdogs warned that an international tribunal was needed to ensure wide acceptance of the verdict.

"Saddam Hussein's capture is a welcome development and it's important that the Iraqi people feel ownership of his trial," Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth said. "But it's equally important that the trial not be perceived as vengeful justice. For that reason, international jurists must be involved in the process."

Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said Monday that the Iraqi people should put Saddam on trial, rather than any international tribunal, as they have suffered most from his rule.

"It was people inside Iraq who were gassed. The mass graves inside of Iraq are full of Iraqis," Blair's official spokesman said, briefing reporters on customary condition of anonymity. "It is just that his fate should rest with Iraqis."

In his brief speech to the nation, President Bush said, "now the former dictator of Iraq will face the justice he denied to millions." The exact form of that justice remains to be seen.

Lt. Gen. Richardo Sanchez affirmed at a news conference Sunday that the U.S.-led coalition was still deciding what to do with Saddam.

"At this point, that has not been determined, we continue to process Saddam at this point in time and those issues will be resolved in the near future," Sanchez said.

Al-Rabii and other council members said they were sure the United States would hand Saddam over to the new Iraqi special tribunal for crimes against humanity, but differed on how soon a trial could be mounted against the former dictator.

"I can tell you he is going to be the first," al-Rabii said.

But Dara Noor al-Din, another council member, told AP that the order of trials would depend on the evidence.

"Maybe he will be the first one, maybe he won't," he said.

Noor al-Din, a leading Kurdish judge, offered a more conservative estimate for the trial date: "Maybe four to six months."

A third council member, Adnan Pachachi, said he expected the trial to start "sometime in March."

That would still be close to the July 1 deadline for the U.S.-led occupation authority to hand over sovereignty to a new, transitional Iraqi government.

All three council members said the trial would be televised.

The occupation authority has suspended executions in Iraq, but al-Rabii said it wouldn't take long for them to be reinstated — especially for Saddam.

"We will get sovereignty on the 30th of June, and I can tell you, he could be executed on the 1st of July," said al-Rabii, a longtime human rights activist.

He said Saddam would have a fair trial, and that Saddam will have "the right to employ the best lawyers in the world, if he wants."

On Monday, Blair's spokesman said Britain would have to accept a possible decision by Iraqis to execute their former leader, despite British opposition to capital punishment.

"Our position on the death penalty is that we do not support it. Were that to be the outcome, that would be something we would have to accept," he said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told CBS News 60 Minutes that Saddam would be accorded the rights of prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, but added that any participation by Saddam in the insurgency against coalition troops might lead to different classification.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday that it hopes U.S. authorities will let it visit Saddam to check on the conditions in which he is being held.

The tribunal will cover crimes committed from July 17, 1968 — the day Saddam's Baath Party came to power — until May 1, 2003 — the day President Bush declared major hostilities over, said Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council. Saddam became president in 1979 but wielded vast influence starting from the early 1970s.

The tribunal will try cases stemming from mass executions of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, as well as the suppression of uprisings by Kurds and Shiite Muslims soon after the 1991 Gulf War.

Al-Hakim said it would also try cases committed against Iran — with which Iraq fought a bloody 1980-88 war — and against Kuwait, which Iraq invaded in 1990, sparking the Gulf War.

The first suspects brought to trial could include top officials of Saddam's government who appeared on the U.S. 55 most-wanted list.

Some of those are already in coalition custody, including former foreign minister Tariq Aziz, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan and Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his role in chemical attacks on Kurds in the 1980s.