Verdict of the U.S. Occupation Court

Verdict of the U.S. Occupation Court

International Action Center Statement - November 06-06

On Nov. 5, Ramsey Clark, one of the defense attorneys for President Saddam Hussein and a former U.S. attorney general, was thrown out of the court in Baghdad by the judge for submitting a written document to the court charging it with being a political instrument by setting the date for reading the verdict two days before the U.S. midterm elections. Clark, a founder of the International Action Center, has become the best-known U.S. critic of the court.

The guilty verdict and death sentence rendered against Saddam Hussein and two of his colleagues on Nov. 5, by the mere date chosen to announce it, a travesty of justice. Though the court was not ready to make the details of its decision known, it rushed the verdict in a desperate attempt to impact on the U.S. national elections on Nov. 7. This alone should disqualify this court, which was established by the occupation regime and is completely dependent on U.S.

All the political forces internationally that have opposed the 16-year-long U.S. war on Iraq--which has included starvation sanctions, bombing and invasion--should also oppose this verdict and sentence, which are part of the U.S. effort to justify the continued occupation at a time when the Iraqi resistance has completely stymied the U.S. and puppet forces inside the country. The verdict is also part of the U.S. attempt to regain hegemony in the region and to threaten nearby countries like Syria and Iran, no matter what relationship these countries had with Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

Since the beginning of the patently illegal trial of the Iraqi leader, Ramsey Clark has taken a principled position of providing competent defense for the Iraqi prisoner. As Clark has written, “Hussein and other former Iraqi officials must have lawyers of their choice to assist them in defending against the criminal charges brought against them” and this “ought to be self-evident among a people committed to truth, justice and the rule of law.” Clark’s current judgment of the court, as he made clear in a Nov. 1 news conference in Washington, is that, "The unfairness of the trial has been vouched for by virtually every legal expert who has addressed the issue."

This unfairness was underlined by the assassination of at least three defense lawyers and six other people connected with the trial, proof that the conditions under which a fair proceeding could be held were impossible to find in Baghdad. In addition, ever time a judge made a decision that allowed the defense attorneys or the prisoners to state their case in court, he was replaced by a new judge subservient to the occupation authorities.

But these proofs of the unfair conduct of the case, while enough to disqualify the proceedings, are themselves only the smaller part of the condemnation of the court and the judgment. This is a case carried out by the side that in 2003 had appeared to conquer Iraq and that held the Iraqi president in its power. The entire proceeding was aimed at justifying an unjustifiable invasion and occupation of a sovereign country, and is itself a slap in the face to the sovereignty of the Iraqi people and of all the peoples of the region. It has nothing to do with justice or with seeking redress for the Iraqi people, who have been victimized for 16 years, with 1.5 million killed by U.S.-led sanctions and over a half-million more by the U.S.-led war and occupation.

At a time when the occupation of Iraq is collapsing under the blows of the resistance, the verdict and sentence are also a desperate attempt of the U.S. and its puppet forces to stir up animosities among the Iraqi people to “divide and conquer” Iraq.

Thus we condemn the verdict and sentence as politically motivated, and reiterate our opinion that it is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Blair who should be on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.