World’s verdict on Hussein trial is mixed

Saddam Hussein’s conviction provoked deeply mixed emotions around the world Monday, raising painful questions about the death penalty, the U.S.-led effort in Iraq and the quest to heal historical atrocities.

From the sidewalks of Arab cities to the government halls of some European countries, critics dismissed Hussein’s death sentence as the flawed conclusion to an inherently illegitimate trial. But among the outcry was a quiet celebration of the punishment assigned to a leader whose brutality made him a symbol around the world of despotism and repression.

Many observers warned that the prospect of executing a former president could further stir sectarian hatred and worsen the bloodshed in Iraq. They also raised eyebrows at the timing, noting that Hussein was sentenced to death as the United States was heading into today’s key midterm elections.

The White House “needs to justify the deaths of 3,000 American soldiers and prove that the losses were not suffered in vain,” said Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, deputy speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Some of the most poignant regrets came from the Arab world, where many people continue to live under the harsh dictatorships exemplified by Hussein’s rule, but where outrage over the U.S. presence in Iraq runs bitter and fierce.

Arabs lamented the trial as a slap to the dignity of the region.

“He was the president of an Arab country, and this was a political trial carried out under American occupation,” said Lebanese restaurant worker Jamal Ajoub, 42.

Lawmakers in Amman, Jordan, condemned the verdict as illegitimate, calling the tribunal “a historic farce.” Even activists who battle against their own repressive governments were quick to call the verdict American-engineered propaganda.

“The whole proceeding was illegitimate,” said Magda Adli of the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence in Cairo. “Everyone knows that the crimes and the genocides committed by the occupation during the past four years against Iraqis are equivalent to four times the crimes they claim were committed by Saddam.”

Throughout much of Europe, the reaction was marked by a widespread, deeply entrenched opposition to the death penalty -- but also by the sense that a courtroom review of Hussein’s crimes was a needed catharsis.

“We are against the death penalty, whether it’s Saddam or anybody else,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a London news conference. But witness testimony of Hussein’s pitiless rule, he quickly added, “does give us a very clear reminder of the total and barbaric brutality of that regime.”

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “It was right and it was important to reappraise Saddam Hussein’s crimes by a court.” But she emphasized her opposition to capital punishment.

A statement from the European Union presidency also reminded the world that the EU did not support the death penalty in any circumstance. “It should not be carried out in this case either,” the statement said.

In Iran, where bitterness abounds against the U.S. government and Hussein, the state-run Tehran Times printed a laundry list of the Iraqi leader’s crimes, and accused the United States of dragging its feet to slow the trial.

“In order to use Saddam’s trial process for propaganda purposes, the U.S. administration prolonged the trials for over one year,” the newspaper wrote under the headline “Republican skulduggery behind Saddam death sentence?”

“The death sentence issued for Saddam is probably the best boost for the Republican campaign,” the newspaper said.

Politicians tended to view the trial not only through the prism of their own governments’ role in Iraq but against the backdrop of their own history.

In Israel, where civilians in Tel Aviv had to take shelter from Iraqi missiles fired by Hussein’s military during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the government welcomed the sentence.

But Ronen Zeidel, an Iraq specialist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, compared the trial unfavorably with the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel.

“What will be remembered is the fact that [Hussein] argued with the judge and went on a hunger strike,” he said. “If Iraq’s purpose through this trial was to heal past wounds and to free itself from the burden of its past traumas, it was not achieved through this trial.”

In Japan, where murderers are put to death by hanging, the government welcomed the verdict as fair and showed no ambivalence about the imposition of the death penalty.

But Japanese politicians were careful to note that Hussein’s trial had been conducted by Iraqis, not Americans. The question of who hears evidence and metes out punishment is sensitive in Japan, where many still regard the Tokyo war crimes trials after World War II as “victors’ justice.”

On Monday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a vocal critic of the Tokyo trials, said the legitimacy of the Hussein proceedings stemmed from the fact that it was an Iraqi process.

Antonio Cassese, an Italian judge who served from 1993 to 1997 as the first president of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia based in The Hague, said the trial was a farce.

In a front-page editorial in the newspaper La Repubblica, Cassese cited what he considered numerous flaws: political manipulation of judges, restrictions placed on defense lawyers for calling witnesses and building their case, and the questionable authenticity of some evidence.

“In Nuremburg, it was also a matter of the victors prosecuting the vanquished,” Cassese wrote. “But at least there, the trial was fair.”

Cassese warned that handing down the death penalty would compound the error.

“Saddam Hussein will become a martyr, on top of already being considered a hero of anti-Americanism,” he wrote.

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megan.stack@latimes.com

Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem, David Holley in Moscow, Tracy Wilkinson in Rome, Borzou Daragahi in Baghdad, Bruce Wallace in Tokyo, Petra Falkenberg and Christian Retzlaff in Berlin, Janet Stobart in London and Achrene Sicakyuz in Paris, and special correspondents Caesar Ahmed in Cairo, Sigal Saban in Tel Aviv and Maher Abukhater in Jerusalem contributed to this report.