Law Expert Says Saddam’s Trial Was Illegal

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The trial of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein contravened international law because it was carried out under laws put into place by the occupying US forces, according to an expert in international criminal law.

“According to international law the trial was illegal,” said Saeed Pirmurad, explaining that the court was established after the invasion by Paul Bremer, the administrator of the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

According to the Geneva Convention and The Hague agreement, said Pirmurad, an  invader cannot change or draft new laws.

“Article 64 of the Geneva Convention says that the penal laws of the occupied territory shall remain in force,” except if they pose a security threat,” he said.

In 2005, one year before Saddam was convicted and hanged for his crimes, the Iraqi government drafted a new penal system, nullifying a previous version drawn up under American supervision. But the new law was not in force during the trial of Saddam or his top officials, said Pirmurad.

“If the law had nullified all the actions resulting from the law of the coalition forces, then the court would have been legal,” he said. “But the law was never approved by the presidency of Iraq.”

Pirmurad, who has a bachelor’s degree in law from Baghdad University and a degree in international law from Germany, said that neither the first Kurdish judge, Rizgar Amin, nor the subsequent others who took his place, had any knowledge of international criminal law.

“Unfortunately, professors and teachers are not very well familiar with the details of international criminal law in Iraq,” he said, adding that Iraq is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose membership is voluntary.

Pirmurad has no doubts that the Iraqi dictator committed crimes against humanity during his 30-year rule, but added that political parties had interfered in the legal system.

“The judges in Saddam’s trial were not professional. I have prepared a study for the European Union evaluating judges’ performance in Iraq and the findings are shocking,” he said.

“If Iraq was a member of the ICC, American military forces as well as Iraqi politicians involved in the sectarian war would have been prosecuted,” according to Pirmurad.

He said that the ICC would have collected more evidence of Saddam’s crimes, and as a result run a fairer and more appropriate trial.

Iraq’s supreme court has recognized crimes against the Kurds by the former Iraqi regime – known as the Anfal Campaign -- as genocide.

But in Pirmurad’s opinion it is because of Iraq’s isolation from the international criminal court circle that the world has not yet recognized the crimes – which include the March 1988 killing of 5,000 innocent Kurds in the town of Halabja -- as genocide.

Pirmurad said that the Kurds would have benefited more from Saddam’s trial, had international judges been involved in the process.

“Had the decision been made by an international court; the families of the victims of Anfal would have been compensated,” he said.  “But this was not possible as Iraq is not a member of the ICC,” he concluded.