Iraqi Tribunal Might Try Hussein and Aides

Ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and hundreds of his aides could go on trial for crimes against humanity and genocide in an Iraqi-led tribunal that would be established soon, Iraqi and American officials said Friday.

The law creating the tribunal would be similar to proposals made in Washington in April, a member of Iraq’s Governing Council said. The law calls for Iraqi judges to hear cases presented by Iraqi lawyers, with international experts serving only as advisors.

That would be starkly different from U.N.-sponsored tribunals set up to consider war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. In those cases, international judges and lawyers have argued and decided cases.

Two members of the Governing Council -- Mahmoud Othman and Samir Shakir Mahmoud -- said Friday that the tribunal would be created in the coming days, as did an official of the U.S.-led occupation authority, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice said its sources in the Coalition Provisional Authority said the tribunal could be established as early as Sunday.

Some human rights groups criticized the plans, saying that Iraq’s U.S. occupiers have too much of a hand in them and that Iraqi judges and prosecutors may not have the experience needed to try the cases.

Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said he was concerned officials hadn’t considered bringing in judges who had worked on major war crimes trials in other countries.

Two recent studies of the Iraqi judicial system, one by the United Nations and the other by the Justice Department, describe a legal system riddled with corruption and incompetence.

But Sandra Hodgkinson, director of the coalition authority’s human rights and justice office, said she believed an Iraqi court system -- with some training from international experts -- would work.

“Iraqis want it that way, and they’re capable of doing it that way,” she said.