A hangman's noose is all Saddam deserves
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 06/11/2006
It is wrong to take pleasure in the approaching death of any human
being, and therefore we do not celebrate the fact that - barring an exceedingly
unlikely turn of events - Saddam Hussein will soon be dangling from a hangman's
rope. But we recognise the justice of yesterday's death sentence by the court
in Baghdad, and we also welcome the fact that this guilty defendant will be
denied the firing squad reserved for those to whom a shred of honour still
attaches.
Saddam was one of the great murderous tyrants of the 20th century;
he was a famously evil man. The problem with such characters is that they can
take on the reputation of pantomime villains. During the Second World War, it
was necessary for propaganda reasons to lampoon "Adolf" as a jumped-up corporal
with a joke moustache. At the height of his power, Idi Amin, the self-styled
"King of Scotland", became a figure of fun. But no one who has visited
Auschwitz, or grasped the scale of torture and cannibalism in 1970s Uganda, now
thinks of Hitler or Amin as remotely comic. In the past few years, Saddam has
too often been presented as a "baddie" by liberal commentators who reckon that
anyone denounced by the "cowboy" Bush must have some of the quirky charm of a
comic-book villain. The truth is that Saddam possessed no more moral scruples
than the average serial killer; perhaps fewer, since, unlike the truly
psychotic, he was sane. His murders were calculated political acts, and they
kept him in power for a scandalously long time.
In recognising the justice of yesterday's verdict, however, we also
have to acknowledge that it was fairly rough justice. The original chief judge
of the court was forced to resign after his impartiality was called into
question; defence lawyers were murdered; and the marshalling of evidence
against Saddam was often disturbingly inept.
Given the vast scale of Saddam's crimes, it was always going to be
difficult to assemble precisely the right package of specimen charges against
him. Even so, the 1982 slaughter of 148 people in the Shia town of Dujail was a
poor choice. Although Saddam did indeed order these wicked killings - he
admitted as much - there were many crimes on a larger scale for which it would
have been possible to produce better witness statements and a clearer chain of
command.
But there is a difference between legal incompetence and a
stitch-up. This was not a kangaroo court, and it did not stage a show trial.
Given that the responsibility for trying Saddam was - rightly - assigned to his
own countrymen, it was unrealistic to expect the legal proceedings to be
conducted according to the highest standards. That may sound patronising, but
it is a statement of the obvious: as the BBC's John Simpson observed yesterday,
"both the defence and the prosecution lawyers had grown up in a legal system
which the former Iraqi president himself had controlled". And it is interesting
to note that, despite weaknesses in the prosecution case, Saddam - in contrast
to Milosevic - forsook effective legal strategies in favour of political
grandstanding and patently insincere invocations of the deity.
What the world has witnessed is the end of a trial, conducted in a
war zone on behalf of a struggling democracy, in which the defendant was as
guilty as sin. The death of Saddam is not a sufficient condition for the
establishment of democracy in Iraq, but it is certainly a necessary one.
Sir Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats, yesterday
issued an appeal for clemency on behalf of a man who, if it had been up to him,
would still be in power. The Iraqi people, we suspect, will ignore this great
statesman. Saddam, like his victims, is destined for an unmarked grave - which
is where he belongs.
The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"
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