Iraq’s rough justice

IT WAS THE U.S. Supreme Court, not the Iraqi High Tribunal, that famously declared: “A defendant is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one.” Still, that legal dictum is an apt description of the process by which the Iraqi court decided to sentence Saddam Hussein to death for the slaughter of 148 Iraqi Shiite villagers in 1982.

With customary exaggeration, President Bush went further, hailing Hussein’s trial, which began in October 2005, as “a milestone in the Iraqi people’s effort to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.” At the other extreme, some human rights groups are finding fault with the proceedings because of evidentiary shortcuts, alleged conflicts of interest and the politically motivated removal of several judges.

The conduct of Hussein’s trial on this and other charges fell short of American norms (such as the right to a trial by jury) and also lacked the imprimatur of the International Criminal Court. As we have argued before, the legitimacy of the proceedings would have been enhanced if respected foreign jurists had joined their Iraqi counterparts on the bench. Some of these deficiencies may be rectified in the appeals process, which must be thorough and painstaking.

That said, the trial established that Hussein ordered the massacre of residents of the Shiite farming town of Dujayl as collective punishment for a failed assassination attempt. Like other examples of Hussein’s brutality, the killings in Dujayl should not have gone unpunished. Whatever its flaws, the trial established Hussein’s guilt in an open and adversarial proceeding (one that the deposed dictator did his best to disrupt).

Not content to pronounce that justice had been done, Bush gushed that the sentencing of Hussein was a “major achievement for Iraq’s young democracy and its constitutional government.” Where Bush and Iraqi’s Shiites discern simple justice in Hussein’s comeuppance, the country’s Sunni population sees sectarian payback by the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. Maliki said that Hussein is finally “facing the penalty he deserves.”

That penalty -- death by hanging -- is also controversial, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair reiterating Monday that his nation opposes the death penalty “whether it’s Saddam or anyone else.” Capital punishment is legal in Iraq (as it is in the U.S., regrettably), and Iraqi authorities are unlikely to be swayed by death penalty abolitionists in this of all cases. The prospect of capital punishment has always been at the end of this trial.

None of this suggests that Hussein should have been given amnesty for the atrocities carried out under his orders. Even critics of the U.S. invasion that brought him down acknowledge that his rule was not just brutal but bestial. Holding him accountable for his crimes is a matter of simple (if rough) justice. But it will be a “milestone” for the rule of law in Iraq only if Sunnis can be convinced that the new order in their country isn’t as unjust as the old one.