Kangaroo Court in Kuwait : Martial law trials infuriate Western allies

Kuwait’s trials of alleged collaborators began in a mood of callous vindictiveness and have progressed to a stage of wanton excess. On Thursday, a martial law court in Kuwait city sentenced eight more people to death by hanging on charges of cooperating with Iraqi occupation forces. That brought to 29 the number of death sentences imposed since the trials began May 19. Almost all of the 200 or so people being held for trial are foreigners--Jordanians, Palestinians, Iraqis or stateless Arabs.

This lineup of those accused of anti-Kuwait crimes is no accident. Kuwait’s government has been quite open about its plan to purge the country of a great part of its foreign population, which before last August’s Iraqi invasion constituted a majority and made up almost the whole of the manual-labor force and much of the professional class. Thousands have already been forcibly expelled, many former residents have been refused readmittance. The trials themselves, which among other things dramatize the powerlessness of alien residents, can be expected to coerce thousands more to leave the country.

A growing number of governments that supported Kuwait’s fight to regain its independence last February have been making clear their displeasure and even disgust with the nature of the martial law trials; France and Germany are among the latest. U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar has specifically called on Kuwait not to carry out the death sentences imposed on six journalists who were convicted of working during the occupation for a pro-Iraq paper. A Kuwaiti official has tried to deflect these concerns with the claim that the ruling emir, who will review every conviction, “has always been very reluctant to approve death sentences.” Perhaps. But even if capital punishment were forbidden, scores and maybe even hundreds of people would be left to face long jail terms--including life imprisonment--because of alleged crimes they were denied the chance to defend themselves against.

The abuses of recognized legal and human rights that have marked the trials from the beginning go on. These include, according to human rights groups, confessions elicited by torture, denial of any right of appeal, denial of adequate legal counsel and prosecutions for offenses that were not specifically prohibited by Kuwaiti law. Kenneth Roth, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, says all of these violate customary and binding provisions of international law.

War’s aftermath almost always sees the victor exacting vengeance on accused collaborators, and certainly Kuwait has the legal and even the moral right to call collaborators to account. But it has the responsibility to do so in ways that uphold the rule of law--one of the purposes, not coincidentally, that helped mobilize international support for its liberation. Proceedings that so flagrantly ignore the protections and obligations of international law, and that result in wildly disproportionate sentences, should continue to be condemned in the strongest terms.