[quote] Another Lawyer in Hussein’s Trial Is Slain
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Three gunmen in a speeding car killed a lawyer for a co-defendant in Saddam Hussein’s trial and wounded another Tuesday in Baghdad, a member of the defense team and police said. It was the second assassination of a Saddam defense team lawyer in less than a month. . .[/quote]
nytimes.com/aponline/interna … illed.html
Has anyone else heard that the Iraqi Special Tribunal has dropped the charge that Saddam gassed the 5,000 Kurdish civilians in the city of Halabja in 1988?
'Given the repeated administration emphasis of this event, you would think that it would be the charge used in the court against Saddam, would you not? Well, I can think of two reasons why the US would be reluctant to bring that matter to court. One, the evidence for the crime has always been somewhat questionable; for example, at one time an arm of the Pentagon issued a report suggesting that it was actually Iran which had used the poison gas in Halabja.{6}
{6} New York Times, January 31, 2003, p.29
And two, the United States, in addition to providing Saddam abundant financial and intelligence support, supplied him with lots of materials to help Iraq achieve its chemical and biological weapons capability; it would be kind of awkward if Saddam’s defense raised this issue in the court. But the United States has carefully orchestrated the trial to exclude any unwanted testimony, including the well-known fact that not longer after the 1982 carnage Saddam is being charged with, in December 1983, Donald Rumsfeld – perfectly well-informed about the Iraqi regime’s methods and the use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops – arrived in Baghdad, sent by Ronald Reagan with the objective of strengthening the relationship between the two countries.{7}
{7} Barry Lando, “Saddam Hussein, a Biased Trial”, Le Monde (Paris), October 17, 2005’
About Halabja…
kdp.pp.se/chemical.html
Or…
“The facts as best they can be reconstructed are the following:
The war between Iran and Iraq was in its eighth year when, on March 16 and 17, 1988, Iraq dropped poison gas on the Kurdish city of Halabja, then held by Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas allied with Tehran.13 According to the testimony of survivors, the chemical weapons employed in Halabja were dropped from airplanes well after the town had been captured by Iranians and Iraqi Kurdish rebel forces allied with them, and after fighting in the immediate area had ceased.”
or…
“Witnesses saw Iraqi jets make more than twenty raids on the town, dropping clusters of bombs. After the flash and the flame of the explosions, a cloud of white almond essence descended upon Halabja. Five thousand people breathed it and died. Another 12000 people were severely injured by the chemicals.”
Or…
[url=http://www.kurd.org/halabja/]"Populations of towns in northern Iraq, especially the town of Halabja, represent the largest civilian populations ever exposed to chemical and biological weapons. 250 population centers and 31 uninhabited strategic areas are known to have been attacked by Iraqi forces from April 1987 to August 1988. In addition to chemical weapons use, for which there is forensic evidence, the Iraqi regime may also have used weaponized biological and radiological agents during the attacks. The population of northern Iraq is 4 million, and initial estimates suggest that as many as 250,000 people may have been exposed at some level. (Saddam’s regime also used chemical weapons against Shi’ites and marsh Arabs in southern Iraq following the Gulf War. Additionally, an estimated 100,000 Iranian soldiers also survived Iraqi chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq War.)
Of all the atrocities committed with weapons of mass destruction, none proved more horrific than the attack on Halabja, which took place over three days in March 1988. Halabja was bombarded with a concoction of chemical weapons which included mustard gas, and the nerve gases sarin, tabun and VX. Five to seven thousand people of 80,000 inhabitants died immediately and a further 20,000 to 30,000 were injured, many severely. Initial studies indicate approximately 52% of current inhabitants were exposed at the time of the attack."[/url]
This atrocity in which weapons of mass destruction were used on civilians has been cited repeatedly by the Bush administration and its supporters as the primary example of Saddam’s unique evil and his willingness to use weapons of mass destruction on innocent civilians.
You would think if Saddam was going to be tried for anything the atrocity at Halabja would be it. Somehow though Halabja appears to have disappeared from among the charges against him.
spook -
The atrocities perpetrated by Saddam Hussein have been cited and documented by numerous countries and non-connected sources. I have just done exactly that in my previouspost.
It is an interesting, and somewhat revealing, choice of phrasing you use to suggest that this is only cited by “…the Bush administration and its supporters …” for their personal gain.
Also, I am unable to find any sourcing for your repeated claim that the Halabja massacre charges have been dismissed from legal proceeding againt Hussein.
Please post link(s) to your sourcing for this claim.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]spook -
The atrocities perpetrated by Saddam Hussein have been cited and documented by numerous countries and non-connected sources. I have just done exactly that in my previouspost.
It is an interesting, and somewhat revealing, choice of phrasing you use to suggest that this is only cited by “…the Bush administration and its supporters …” for their personal gain.
Also, I am unable to find any sourcing for your repeated claim that the Halabja massacre charges have been dismissed from legal proceeding againt Hussein.
Please post link(s) to your sourcing for this claim.[/quote]
I don’t claim that Saddam won’t be tried for the Halaba atrocity in his war crimes trial. I say there are hints that that charge has been dropped for some reason and ask if anyone – particularly those with a legal background – knows what crimes Saddam is actually being tried for.
Funny, a few posts back you were writing as if it were a certainty.
Anyway, maybe they’re slowing down on the other cases since they’re already sure that they will hang him for this first one. Much as the victims and victims’ families of the Halabja massacre might want Saddam to be executed for what he did there, I’m sure they would prefer to see him doing the rope fandango for anything rather than allowing him to die a natural death while wading through dozens of different trials so he could be executed for ALL of his crimes. . . .
Funny, a few posts back you were writing as if it were a certainty.
[/quote]
Really? Quote me. It’s all there in black and white. 
Regardless of what he did or didn’t do, here’s more proof that Saddam will not receive a fair trial.
[quote]Third Lawyer in Hussein Trial Is Killed
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 21 - A lawyer on Saddam Hussein’s defense team was kidnapped and later found dead this morning in a Baghdad neighborhood, the Interior Ministry said. He was the third lawyer representing Mr. Hussein or his co-defendants to have been killed since their trial started late last year. . .
early this morning while she, her husband and three children slept, about 20 men in civilian clothes burst into their house in the neighborhood of Slaikh, on the edge of the predominantly Sunni area of Adamiya, and identified themselves as members of a ministry security brigade. Mr. Obeidi, 39, had little chance to reply before he was seized, she said. . .
Mr. Obeidi had been one of the most vocal members of Mr. Hussein’s team in calling for better security or for the boycotting of the trial after the assassinations of two other defense lawyers in October and November last year. But despite the dangers he has also said that as long as there was a trial, then lawyers should participate in the defense. . .
“We think that it’s impossible to hold a trial in Baghdad in these security conditions, and that the court should be transferred to a location outside Iraq,” Mr. Obeidi said in November.
After the first killing, Mr. Obeidi, one of the three main lawyers who has represented Mr. Hussein since the opening of the trial, had been among those who decided to suspend their participation in the trial, saying that they would consider returning to court only if the killers of Mr. Janabi were brought to justice.
“Under the present security conditions in Iraq, our clients’ best interests are served by our suspending our participation in the trial, because we cannot move freely, much less undertake the kind of legal preparations that are essential to defend them,” Mr. Obeidi said at the time.
The Iraqi Bar Association and lawyers appearing for Mr. Hussein and other defendants later accepted offers of protection from Iraqi and American officials. [b]The killings have renewed doubts about whether it is possible to hold a fair trial in the midst of a conflict that has spurred revenge killings. Some Western human rights advocates have said that the killings reopened the issue of whether the trial should have been held outside Iraq.
Defense objections have also gone beyond the lack of protection, with claims that the court is inherently biased against Mr. Hussein and other defendants[/b]. . .[/quote]
nytimes.com/2006/06/21/world … r=homepage
pimpin’ for Saddam now?
wow…just wow…
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]Regardless of what he did or didn’t do, here’s more proof that Saddam will not receive a fair trial.
[/quote]
Given what he may deserve as a sentence after a fair trial, he may actually be better off with an unfair one.