Iraqis call for Hussein’s execution

Published 9:00 pm Monday, December 15, 2003

WASHINGTON – President Bush on Monday promised a fair, public trial for Saddam Hussein, while Iraqi leaders said they want to send their deposed president to a quick trial with an eye toward executing him by summer.

Hussein was captured on Saturday by U.S. troops who found him in a one-man hole in the ground in front of an adobe hut, where he apparently had been living. The dictator surrendered meekly, and is being held by American troops at an undisclosed location.

“Good riddance. The world is better off without you, Mr. Saddam Hussein,” Bush said Monday from the White House.

Bush declined to say where, when or how Hussein would be tried. The U.S.-appointed Iraq Governing Council established a special tribunal last week to try top members of Hussein’s government for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“The Iraqi citizens need to be very much involved in the development of a system that brings him to justice,” Bush said. “And there needs to be a public trial, and all the atrocities need to come out, and justice needs to be delivered. And I’m confident it will be done in a fair way.”

Members of the Governing Council said Monday that proceedings against Hussein would begin soon.

“Very soon. In the next few weeks,” Mouwafak al-Rabii said. Council member Adnan Pachachi said he expected the trial would begin “sometime in March.” A third council member, Dara Noor al-Din, offered a more conservative estimate: “Maybe four to six months.”

But Bush said that details still needed to be worked out before Hussein, whose interrogation by U.S. officials has just begun, can be handed over to the Iraqis.

And U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the world body would not support bringing Hussein before a tribunal that might sentence him to death.

Appearing to contradict earlier U.S. statements that officials would leave it to Iraqis to work out the details of their tribunal, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher indicated the U.S. government now planned to play a major role in crafting the court.

Boucher said the State Department would send Pierre-Richard Prosper, its ambassador at large for war crime issues, to Baghdad early next year to work on setting up a court.

But members of the Iraq council predicted a quick trial – and a quick execution, as soon as Iraq’s occupiers, who suspended the death penalty, pass sovereignty to a new Iraqi government.

“We will get sovereignty on the 30th of June,” al-Rabii said. “I can tell you, he could be executed on the 1st of July.”

Meanwhile, top defense officials said Hussein will be given the protections accorded prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, which prohibits violence, cruelty and torture of prisoners as well as humiliating and degrading treatment.

But if it is found that Hussein was involved in attacks against coalition troops, he might be placed in a different category, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, without elaboration.

The international Red Cross said Monday it considers Hussein a prisoner of war and wants U.S. authorities to allow it to visit him and check the conditions in which he is being held.

Hussein’s capture is reportedly already reaping dividends for the U.S. military. The first transcript of Hussein’s initial interrogation and the documents he had with him helped lead to the capture of several top regime figures, one commander said Monday.

However, Hussein has denied to his interrogators that his regime had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida, U.S. officials said.

Hussein has greeted his initial interrogation with sarcasm and defiance, the officials said, discussing the questioning only on the condition of anonymity. Some of his responses are regarded as an attempt to rationalize and justify his actions, the officials said.

Hussein has complied with simple commands to stand up and sit down, but officials said he has not provided much useful information on the guerrilla war or other matters.

He has also denied knowledge of the fate of Scott Speicher, the Navy fighter pilot who disappeared over Iraq during the first Gulf War. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Hussein denied taking any prisoners when asked about Speicher.

U.S. intelligence and military officials say their first priority is to focus on the resistance and any impending guerrilla attacks, and the whereabouts of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri and other remaining senior regime officials and insurgent leaders.

But it is unclear how much knowledge he has of those matters. Intelligence officials say they believe he has been too concerned with survival to serve much more than an inspiration to the resistance.

Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, whose 4th Infantry Division troops caught Hussein, said the lack of communications equipment in his hide-out indicated Iraq’s deposed leader was not commanding the resistance.

Conversely, soldiers found $750,000 in U.S. $100 bills in the raid and Rumsfeld said the money was related to the attacks.

Odierno told reporters that his soldiers were led to Hussein by an informant who was a member of a family close to the deposed leader. However, it was not clear whether anyone could claim the $25 million reward offered for information leading to Hussein’s capture.

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