Human Rights for a Gasser?

Posted on November 20, 2006 in Atrocity Justice Occupation of Iraq

The tribunal’s statute requires that death sentences be implemented 30 days after the final appeal, and that no commutation is possible. If the death sentence against Saddam Hussein is upheld on appeal, there is a chance that he will be executed before the conclusion of his ongoing trial for genocide against the Kurds. *

It’s hardly popular to declare that Saddam Hussein was railroaded, but one human rights organization has come out and said exactly that:

Human Rights Watch says the case against Saddam Hussein and three senior colleagues on trial was marred by a striking lack of “linkage evidence” to prove his command responsibility. The facts of the victims’ detention, exile, and execution were clear, but no detailed evidence established the way decisions were taken or proved that Saddam Hussein had criminal intent.

We cannot just line up the perpetrators of genocide and shoot them: this is to fall to their level. Dead Kurds are not served by sloppy jurisprudence. As HRW declares, we must know the process that led to their death, order upon order, memorandum upon memorandum. The evidence is out there. Saddam should serve as a living exhibit of the fate of murderous dictators, not as a quickly buried corpse.

Here’s the full report.

*Which could be a means of covering up the complicity of Donald Rumsfeld and the Reagan Administration.