Hussein Still Divides Iraqi Opinion

The last time they saw Saddam Hussein, he was bedraggled, disoriented and being checked for lice by a U.S. medic wearing rubber gloves for protection.

When Iraqis got their first glimpse in seven months of their former leader at his arraignment here Thursday on charges of crimes against humanity, it was of a man who once again appeared more in command -- and more intimidating.

Those who fear him watched nervously as he upbraided the young jurist presenting the charges, declared himself still president of Iraq and defended his 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Those who respect him grinned with satisfaction that the swagger was back in his step, even if restrained by shackles.

“He’s right. Kuwait is a part of Iraq. He was defending our national rights,” said Akram Adil, nodding in approval as he and half a dozen young men watched a delayed broadcast of the proceedings in a backstreet shop in the Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya. “Kuwait was stealing oil from Iraq and trying to destroy our national economy.”

But though some perceived the deposed leader as proudly presidential, others suggested that he was headed for a comeuppance richly deserved.

“If they cut him in quarters, it wouldn’t be enough for us,” said Mohammed Abdel Azeem, owner of the Musawi tailor shop in the capital’s brooding Shiite Muslim bastion of Sadr City, as he watched the proceedings. “The torture we endured in the past and right now is his fault.”

“What he’s done to the people should be done to him,” added Karim Hussin Abadi, a 61-year-old grocery worker. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

Others saw the televised courtroom confrontation as a symbol of the shame borne by all Iraqis who, they believe, have been living under the bootheels of a U.S.-led occupation.

“It’s a humiliation, not just for Iraqis but for all Arab peoples,” said Aamer Eiisa, a Shiite whose watch repair shop was closed for the late-afternoon theater of Hussein appearing before the magistrate.

As six men crouched to watch the replayed proceedings on a TV set on a low table, Eiisa lamented that newly sovereign Iraq’s first defendant has become “a symbol for all Iraqis,” a poster boy for a vanquished people still sorting through bombed buildings, bearing with gasoline shortages, living in the dark when the electricity fails.

Some called for genuine justice, for taking the high road by ensuring that the former dictator gets a fair trial. They clung to the hope that putting the Baath Party dictatorship behind them would clean the national slate so Iraq’s new history as a democracy could be written.

In Basra, one of many southern cities where Shiites suffered repression at the hands of Hussein and his fellow Sunni Muslims, merchant Saad Wannas said the former leader should face the just legal proceedings he denied his own enemies -- and hopefully face the same brutal end he gave many of them.

“Saddam is lucky because he will get a fair trial. He never offered that for his opponents,” said Wannas, 45. “He executed them like sheep taken to slaughter. I pray that the death sentence upon him is carried out in a public place.”

Hussein’s 26-minute appearance before an unnamed Iraqi judge was videotaped and rebroadcast repeatedly on Arabic satellite television. Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, obtained an audiotape of the proceedings despite a court ban on carrying voices or pictures of courtroom personnel. Though he appeared confused in the initial moments of his arraignment, Hussein quickly gathered himself and displayed the hauteur and defiance for which he was famous.

His personal appearance was a transformation of the images Iraqis saw after his Dec. 13 capture. A U.S. military videotape then showed a grubby captive with matted hair and scruffy beard, a medic probing his mouth with a tongue depressor and flashlight and poring over his scalp in search of vermin. It was an unabashed attempt at humiliation that backfired with some Iraqis, who then, as on Thursday, resented the reminder that foreigners had control of their country.

Hussein’s defiance before the Iraqi Special Tribunal judge was at times heartening for his supporters, who reveled in their leader’s refusal to kowtow. For his detractors, his combativeness was worrisome evidence that the former dictator still had the power to convince some that they would be better off if he were still in charge.

Hussein’s trial will put more than the 67-year-old prisoner in the dock. All matter of diplomatic dirt and unholy alliances will be brought to the surface during the proceedings, including foreign government complicity with the Baathists, said Sadik Musawi, political chief for the Constitutional Monarchy Movement. “It’s not a danger for the Iraqi people. We want answers,” he said.

Many Iraqis seem too weary of their hardships to muster much emotion about Hussein.

“It doesn’t matter if they execute him or not. It won’t change anything,” said a young pharmacist who wouldn’t give her name. “Part of my life -- part of all of our lives -- is gone. The past is the past, some good, some bad.”

In Hussein’s birthplace, Al Auja, near Tikrit, his court appearance was another painful blow after the December debacle of U.S. troops finding him hiding in a dirt hole nearby.

Bashir Sumeidai, an Al Auja resident, argued that Hussein could not be called to account for every misdeed committed during his rule, any more than President Bush could be made to pay for mistakes by his subordinates. “The administration claimed what happened in Abu Ghraib were individual acts. I think the same thing applies to Saddam,” he said, comparing the prisoner abuse scandal involving U.S. soldiers with the Hussein regime’s long record of attacks, torture and repression.

Fears of heightening social tensions in an already combustible atmosphere gave others pause. Many found it disturbing.

“Saddam and his regime are part of the past that Iraqis want to forget. They want to forget him and everything related to that stage,” said Saddoun Dulaimi, director of the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies. He said the arraignment should have been a closed proceeding to deny Hussein a world stage and to avoid antagonizing his supporters.

“Maybe it could lead to a confrontation between Iraqi factions, between those who support Saddam and those who believe he is responsible for disaster here,” Dulaimi said.

The most recent poll by Dulaimi’s institute showed that about 20% of Iraqis surveyed thought Hussein deserved clemency, while 56% wanted to see him convicted and executed.

“The real issues have to do with him as a symbol for Sunni Arab dominance,” said Juan Cole, professor and chairman of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan. “Those Sunni Arabs who had benefited from the Baath system are reluctant to see him pilloried and killed. The Sunnis Arabs have still not come to terms with the crimes against humanity that the Baaths committed.”

Still, Cole expressed the hope that a full airing of the past at the trial, which is expected to begin next year, will move Iraqis toward national reconciliation.

Williams is a Times staff writer and Khalil is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin in Baghdad and special correspondents Said Rifai in Al Auja, Azad Seddiq in Sulaymaniya, Roaa Ahmed in Mosul and Shehab Mahmoud in Basra contributed to this report.