Comments

You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name

Your e-mail (optional)

Website (optional)

	My Original Nic Pic-a-Nic Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Foto

Submit your comments on this article

Iraq

Saddam appeals against death sentence

2006-12-04

LAWYERS for Saddam Hussein and two former aides sentenced to death lodged appeals today, the Iraqi prosecutor said, following a trial slammed by some rights experts as unfair and fundamentally flawed.

The defence had been given until Tuesday to submit their appeals. The case is already with the appeals court, which will decide whether the hangings should be carried out. Meanwhile, Saddam is still on a trial for genocide against Kurds.

Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said he had witnessed the handing over of the documents, although Saddam's chief lawyer said it had not yet happened.

"Lawyers for Saddam Hussein and two others sentenced to death came to the court today and presented their appeals," chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said. He said he had witnessed the handing over of the documents, although Saddam's chief lawyer said it had not yet happened.

Saddam was sentenced to hang a month ago for crimes against humanity over the killings of 148 Shi'ites from the town of Dujail after he escaped assassination there in 1982. His half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander also received the death penalty for their part in the killing, torturing and deporting of hundreds of Dujailis.

The nine-judge Appellate Chamber, which could amend both the verdict and the sentence, has unlimited time to make a ruling, but if the appeal fails, then Iraqi High Tribunal rules say the execution must follow a final decision within 30 days. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a member of the Shi'ite majority persecuted under Saddam's Sunni minority rule, has said he wants the execution carried out this year. Legal experts, however, have said appeals could yet take months and there is ambiguity about what constitutes the "final decision".

New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned the verdict as unsound, saying the court had been guilty of so many shortcomings that a fair trial had been impossible.

The tribunal has still to make public the reasoning for the November 5 death sentences, although it has promised to publish them on its website. The lengthy ruling is eagerly awaited by international jurists keen to assess how the court performed. But in a comprehensive report last month, New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned the verdict as unsound, saying the court had been guilty of so many shortcomings that a fair trial had been impossible. It said the court lacked the expertise for such a complex trial, had failed to give the defence advance notice of key documents, while statements by government officials had undermined its independence and perceived impartiality.

Posted by:Fred

#4 It's good to see that he cares about continuing to live. Too bad he couldn't have cared about others continuing to live.

Posted by: gorb 2006-12-04 19:11

#3 Damn the order, the troop should'a just tossed the grenades down the hole. Probably would have saved a lot of people killed by his loyalists since and sent their old command structure into an early turf war making their identification that much easier for clean up.

Posted by: Procopius2K 2006-12-04 09:41

#2 By lodging appealsin the proper manner, Mr. Hussein and his lawyers implicitely accept the court's right to impose judgement, thus accepting the legitimacy of the entire endeavor.

Posted by: trailing wife 2006-12-04 08:19

#1 Notice the nice "conclusions before evidence" approach of HRW? Typical. They don't have the written judgment, but they're ruling on the trial's quality.

Every one of their objections is either based on inacurrate or incomplete info, or is disingenuous, applying standards or approaches they know are not relevant in a civil (inquisitorial) trial system.

The trial was not complex; advance notice is not as important in an inquisitorial system because the panel can take the manner of introduction into account - not to mention the fact that the defense had literally months and months to challenge or interpret the evidence due to delays; any fair-minded observer of the process, day in and day out, knows the defense had ample opportunity to do anything it wanted.

The court has problems, but one can safely disregard HRW's perspective.

Posted by: Verlaine 2006-12-04 00:43

00:00