Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: The new Iraqi tribunal

Friday, Dec. 12, 2003 | 8:57 a.m.

IRAQ'S transitional Governing Council has voted to create its own tribunal to try Saddam Hussein and others who committed genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Now is the time for the United States to step back and offer the new tribunal the resources it will need to do the job legally and thoroughly. At the same time the coalition forces must continue to press the search for Saddam and others suspected of these crimes.

The Iraqi tribunal will find no shortage of evidence that the deposed leader and his henchman are guilty of all of these crimes. If ever there is a case to prove genocide, it's what the Iraqi army and police did to the Kurdish people in the north of the country. I have witnessed the results of their attempt to wipe out the culture and lives of the Kurds. In 1992, when in northern Iraq, I interviewed dozens of Kurds who told of the butchery and torture. At the same time at least three or four Blackhawk helicopters carried large amounts of evidence out for examination by our government.

Although I haven't seen what Saddam did to the Shiites living in the south, recent revelations have confirmed they fared no better than the Kurds in the north. Mass graves and the draining of the southern marshes, driving Shiites from their homes, is some of the most stark testimony available.

Baghdad judge and council member Dara Nor al-Dim helped write the proposal for the war crimes tribunal. The New York Times reports that "Judge Nor al-Din was imprisoned by Mr. Hussein last year, after he ruled in a property case that the Iraqi Constitution took precedence over the decisions of Mr. Hussein's Revolutionary Command Council. He was released from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in a general amnesty in October 2002.

"In his view, the tribunal would not hear charges against just the top officials of the old government -- 38 of 55 senior officials identified by the American military are in American custody in Iraq -- but also against anyone accused of knowingly taking part in mass killings, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

" 'To give you an example, take the artillery soldier whose officer gave him chemical weapons to fire,' the judge said. 'The soldier didn't know they were chemical weapons, but the officer knew. In that case we would charge the officer. But if we have evidence that the soldier knew, we would charge him with the crime too.' "

The idea of bringing Saddam and his brutes to justice isn't new. After the first Gulf War, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., produced a resolution calling for the creation of an international tribunal to make a record of Saddam's crimes. Again in 1998 he called for a International Criminal Tribunal for "indicting, prosecuting and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials for crimes ..."

In 1999 Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., put an amendment on the Foreign Operations Bill for the fiscal year 2000, reminding his colleagues and the White House that, "during the 105th Congress, the United States Senate, on March 13, 1998, passed S. Con. Res. 78, a resolution urging the president to call upon the 'United Nations to form an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and any other Iraqi officials who may be found responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and other violations of international humanitarian law ...' "

With Saddam now on the run and the Iraqis looking forward to their own future with a taste for justice, their own tribunal deserves our support. Their actions will send a message to other dictators and kings in the Middle East that, eventually, all of them may have to face the people they abuse.