quote:

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You probably remember last week that the judge in the Saddam Hussein genocide and general evilness trial told Saddam that he didn't think Saddam was a dictator.

Now comes word that the judge has been tossed for lacking impartiality. That seems understandable, I guess. But a government spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, says that "this was a decision by the cabinet of the prime minister."

Isn't something like this supposed to be up to a higher judicial authority?

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quote:

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The Iraqi Special Tribunal and the trial of Saddam Hussein are also a violation of international law. The Geneva Convention, to which Washington is a signatory, explicitly forbids an occupying power from creating courts. In addition, the trial itself, along with the total isolation of the defendants and denial of all visitation and legal rights violates the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. The defense lawyers who have stepped forward have been threatened and intimidated. Two lawyers on the defense team have been assassinated. Today in Iraq there is no judicial system. There are no codes, no laws, no courts. There still is no agreement on a constitution. The entire structure of the Iraqi state was destroyed. In its place is only the most brutal form of outright military domination.

The Iraqi Special Tribunal has been illegitimate since its very formation. It is a creation of L. Paul Bremer III of the U.S., former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority--the illegal, occupying power. Bremer initially appointed Salem Chalabi, the nephew of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, to organize and lead the court.

Chalabi had returned to Iraq from exile with the aid of U.S. tanks in April 2003. He opened a law office to draft the new laws that have reopened Iraq to foreign capital, in collaboration with the law firm of former Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, a war profiteer, an ideologue of the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld cabal and a principal architect of the war.

Bremer also appointed the tribunal judges. The funding and the personnel are totally controlled by U.S. forces. The U.S. Congress has appropriated $128 million to fund the court. Of course, the court has no jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. forces in the invasion and occupation!

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quote:

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In March 2006 the European Court of Human Rights avoided having to decide if the trial violated international human rights law by claiming that it had no jurisdiction because the European allies of the United States were not involved in the trial. The Court did implicitly seem to agree that it was the United States — and not Iraq — who were responsible for the trial. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on 30 November 2005 and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers in March 2006 explicitly confirmed that the United States shared responsibility with the Iraqi authorities.

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It seems the judge was removed not only because he dared to stray from the US government's position, but it also seems timely because the court is preparing to possibly hear evidence of Saddam's accomplices--namely the US government--in the 1980s.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0609-01.htm

It's obvious Hussein is being used as a patsy to divert attention from the fact he was put into power by the US government and kept there to do its dirty work, while thousands of innocent people were killed. The new fraudulently "elected" regime there is doing the same.

Here's an interesting piece about the whole thing:

The Institute For Political Studies
Investigative report by Jim Vallette
with Steve Kretzmann and Daphne Wysham
This brief examines never-before-published government and corporate memoranda, letters, and telegrams, which we found in the National Archives, along with government documents recently published by the National Security Archives. Selected copies of the National Archives correnspondence are indexed below, and available on our website in Adobe Acrobat format. Others are cited herein and are available upon request. The National Security Archives-released documents may be found at: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Our examination shines a new spotlight on the incredible revolving door between Bechtel and the Reagan administration that drove U.S.-Iraq interactions between 1983 and 1985. The men who courted Saddam while he gassed Iranians are now waging war against him, ostensibly because he holds weapons of mass destruction. To a man, they now deny that oil has anything to do with the conflict. Yet during the Reagan administration, and in the years leading up to the present conflict, these men shaped and implemented a strategy that has everything to do with securing Iraqi oil exports
Crude Vision:
EXPOSED: How Oil Interests Obscured US Government Focus On Chemical Weapons Use by Saddam Hussein
The Institute For Political Studies
Investigative report by Jim Vallette
with Steve Kretzmann and Daphne Wysham
Click here to go to Adobe Acrobat version of report (download free Adobe Acrobat reader)
This brief examines never-before-published government and corporate memoranda, letters, and telegrams, which we found in the National Archives, along with government documents recently published by the National Security Archives. Selected copies of the National Archives correspondence are indexed below, and available on our website in Adobe Acrobat format. Others are cited herein and are available upon request. The National Security Archives-released documents may be found at: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Our examination shines a new spotlight on the incredible revolving door between Bechtel and the Reagan administration that drove U.S.-Iraq interactions between 1983 and 1985. The men who courted Saddam while he gassed Iranians are now waging war against him, ostensibly because he holds weapons of mass destruction. To a man, they now deny that oil has anything to do with the conflict. Yet during the Reagan administration, and in the years leading up to the present conflict, these men shaped and implemented a strategy that has everything to do with securing Iraqi oil exports.

Adobe Acrobat version of report (download free Adobe Acrobat reader)
Scanned memoranda obtained from the National Archives:
File name Date #pages Brief description
072084.pdf
07/20/84 5 Memo from Bechtel to energy ministries of Iraq and Jordan
072684.pdf
07/26/84 1 Internal memo, Bechtel
101584.pdf
10/15/84 4 Correspondence between Bechtel and Placke (State Dept.)
010785.pdf
01/07/85 2 Notes from the first Rappaport/Bechtel meeting
012385.pdf
01/23/85 2 Internal memo, Bechtel
020885.pdf
02/08/85 1 Internal memo, Bechtel
050385.pdf
05/03/85 3 Internal memo, Bechtel
061485.pdf
06/14/85 2 Letter from law firm to Bechtel
071185.pdf
07/11/85 1 Letter from William Clark to E. Robert Wallach
080185.pdf
08/01/85 2 Internal memo, Bechtel
092585.pdf
09/25/85 2 Letter from Shimon Peres to Edwin Meese (coming)
013086.pdf
01/30/86 3 Internal memo, Bechtel (coming)
020786.pdf
02/07/86 1 Internal memo, Bechtel (coming)
Adobe Acrobat version of report (download free Adobe Acrobat reader)

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