Under heavy security, Saddam Hussein and his seven co-defendants were in the courthouse Sunday awaiting expected verdicts in Hussein’s first trial for crimes against humanity, just two days before U.S. voters go to the polls in closely contested congressional elections.
U.S. and Iraqi officials say the timing of the expected guilty verdict and sentencing is sheer coincidence. But Hussein’s lawyers and others, including left-leaning bloggers, charge that the date was pushed back to give the Bush administration and GOP candidates a positive headline from Baghdad after a violent month in which more than 100 U.S. troops were killed.
The five-member panel overseeing the trial of the former president and his seven co-defendants in July set the verdict and sentencing for Oct. 16, but last month it announced an extension until Sunday. Hussein could be sentenced to death by hanging if convicted, though the verdict is subject to appeal.
Another delay is possible, but U.S. officials say they expect a decision Sunday. Iraqi leaders have braced for violence, rescinding leaves for military officers and deploying troops to Dujail out of fear of reprisal killings by former regime elements.
On Saturday, the government issued a curfew prohibiting anyone from being on the streets of Baghdad, Salahuddin province, which includes Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, and the restive province of Diyala north of Baghdad.
Raid Juhi, a spokesman for the Iraqi High Tribunal, said that “it is a 100 percent Iraqi court” and that U.S. officials had nothing to do with the date chosen for the verdict.
“It is absolutely coincidence,” Juhi said.
Others have found that assertion hard to believe. “There’s just no coincidence here,” said Scott Horton, a Columbia University law professor who has worked in Iraq defending Iraqi journalists and who publicized the timing of the sentencing via his e-mailed newsletter.
“What they’re doing is grabbing the headlines on the last news cycle before Election Day. … It’s the only mildly positive news story that could come out of Iraq.”
The trial centers on the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims from the northern Iraqi town of Dujail who were shot after an attempt to assassinate Hussein there in July 1982.
During the 40-session trial, the prosecution presented incriminating documents, including an execution order for 148 people that was signed by Hussein and an investigative report presented to Hussein that indicated only 10 people were involved in the assassination attempt. Hussein acknowledged that he issued an order to have the village’s orchards destroyed and said he had entire families in Dujail detained together.
“We hope that the verdict will give this man what he deserves for the crimes he committed against the Iraqi people,” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday after meeting with tribal leaders in the southern city of Amarah. He has said he wants Hussein executed.
A second trial of Hussein and six co-defendants is under way for their roles in Operation Anfal, a 1987-88 campaign against Iraqi Kurds in which 180,000 people were killed. In that case, Hussein and one co-defendant face charges of genocide.
The impact a guilty verdict Sunday might have on U.S. elections remains unclear, with pollsters and analysts saying that a single story may not be enough to offset voters’ deep dissatisfaction with the war.
Milestones boost popularity
Still, throughout some of the most difficult periods of the war in Iraq, Americans’ confidence and President Bush’s popularity have spiked after milestones, offering benchmarks that the White House could point to as evidence that the administration is on the right course despite the non-stop violence that dominates the daily news cycle.
It happened after Hussein was captured in December 2003 and again after the U.S.-led coalition handed sovereignty to the Iraqis in June 2004. American confidence jumped again after Iraqis went to the polls in January 2005 to elect an interim government.
There also was a small bounce earlier this year after insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air strike.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad has shrugged off the suggestion that Americans influenced the court schedule. “That decision was made by the Iraqi judges,” Khalilzad told CNN last week. “The United States had nothing to do with the selection of the date.”
During a briefing for reporters last week, U.S. court advisers said they have been frustrated by the inconsistent schedule that Iraqi judges kept over the trial, which has dragged on for more than a year. But skeptics note that many of the details surrounding security and custody of defendants have been coordinated by the U.S. Regime Crimes Liaison Office.
Regardless, some political analysts say they doubt the verdict can have any significant impact this late in the campaign.
Charlie Cook, publisher of The Cook Political Report, an independent publication, said the Hussein verdict will have no effect. Polls show voters are galvanized by their frustration with the war, he said.
“Unless they take him out to a firing range and shoot him on live American television on Monday, this is going to have no impact on the elections,” Cook said. “There’s no good news for the Republicans anymore. This election is not about Saddam Hussein.”
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said developments in the final hours of a campaign rarely affect races. Most of this year’s contests are set in “hard plastic,” he said.
There also is the chance that violence after the verdict could hurt GOP hopes. Last week, the verdict was far from front and center in a race entwined more than others with the war, the tightly contested 6th Congressional District campaign in Chicago’s western suburbs.
Peter Roskam, the GOP candidate who has campaigned alongside President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, said he didn’t know whether the verdict could help his campaign.
“I think it will draw attention to the fact that the Middle East continues to be a complicated, dangerous place,” said Roskam, a state senator.
His Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Army National Guard major who lost her legs when a grenade hit the helicopter she was co-piloting during a tour in Iraq, said she did not think the verdict was on voters’ minds.
“I was out in Elmhurst at the train station this morning. Nobody came up to me and said, `Do you think Saddam Hussein is going to get a good sentence?'” said Duckworth, who has called the war a mistake. “A few people come up and say, `My son, my brother, whoever, is serving in Iraq right now. What are we going to do about what’s going on over there?'”
Bracing for violence
Meanwhile, in Baghdad, Iraqi officials are bracing. All eight defendants face the same set of charges, listed in the court’s charter under war crimes and crimes against humanity. But prosecutors are seeking death sentences only for three of them: Hussein; Barzan Ibrahim, Hussein’s half brother and Iraq’s intelligence chief at the time of the Dujail killings, and Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former Iraqi vice president.
Hussein’s lawyers, Khalil al-Dulaimi and former U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, have warned that a death sentence for Hussein surely would lead to increased violence.
That would be in addition to the steady bloodshed of recent weeks. On Saturday, at least 39 people died violently or were found dead across Iraq, The Associated Press reported. However, in one merciful note, kidnappers released a blind Iraqi athlete and Paralympics coach, sports officials said.
Those involved in the Hussein trial have faced constant danger. Four defense attorneys were killed, 200 relatives of victims of Dujail have been slain, and several families of witnesses have been moved to the Green Zone, said Bassem Ridha, the Iraqi government’s court observer.
“This is going to be a great day in Iraq’s history, but we know that there are people who are going to respond negatively,” Ridha said. “We know that Saddam loyalists will try to take revenge.”
The Bush administration and other U.S. officials have said they hope the trial will lift Iraqi confidence and help lead to the destruction of former regime elements in the insurgency.
Bush, who made “regime change” the stated goal of the U.S.-led invasion, frequently speaks of Hussein’s ouster as just cause for the war since other rationales–such as suspicions about weapons of mass destruction–have fallen away.
“One of the lessons of September the 11th, 2001, is that when this country sees a threat we must take those threats seriously before they come home to hurt us. I saw a threat in Saddam Hussein,” Bush said last week on a campaign swing through Georgia.
But for Iraqis living in a country entrenched in civil strife and a fearsome insurgency, the scheduled verdict has the feeling of a tarnished moment.
Falah Hassan Mohammed, who runs a hardware store in Baghdad, recalled being overwhelmed with joy when the former dictator was pulled from an underground hiding spot in December 2003.
Mohammed, 51, long resented Hussein and blamed him for his years as a prisoner of war during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.
But now, Mohammed said, he feels conflicted. “I hate Saddam Hussein and I hope they will execute him,” he said. “But there is no doubt that we were better with Saddam than we are in this current situation.”
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amadhani@tribune.com
