Ex-war crimes prosecutor’s thoughts on justice

Sunday, Oct. 16, 2005 | 10:25 a.m.

Although he believes no one deserves to be brought to justice more than Saddam Hussein, a world-renowned authority on human rights violations questions whether the trial set to begin this week in Baghdad is the proper venue for trying the ousted Iraqi dictator.

"With suicide bombs going off every day, how do you have a fair trial?" said Richard Goldstone, a former justice of South Africa's highest court. "You certainly can't have a public trial."

That is only one of the misgivings Goldstone has about the upcoming trial, which he fears could leave many victims of Saddam's alleged atrocities feeling cheated. If the trial is "rushed and not efficiently executed," it could even transform Saddam into a martyr, Goldstone said.

"I would have preferred to have seen him brought to an international court," Goldstone, in town to deliver a lecture Saturday at UNLV, said Friday.

"The Iraqis are entitled to bring him to trial. But he committed crimes not only against his own people but international crimes against non-Iraqis."

Saddam is to be tried in connection with the 1982 massacre of 143 Shiites in a village north of Baghdad following a failed assassination attempt against him.

"He's got terrible crimes to answer for, genocide against his own people, against the Kurds, and huge war crimes against Iran during the Iranian war. If anybody deserves to be brought to justice, it's Saddam Hussein."

The 66-year-old Goldstone has spent his career dealing with issues like those for which Saddam will be in the dock.

He played a key role in ending apartheid, the system of institutionalized racism that gripped his country for nearly 50 years. He prosecuted war criminals from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

He investigated the NATO military intervention in Kosovo and the controversial Iraqi Oil for Food program. Once considered a candidate to become secretary general of the United Nations, he authored a book, "For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator," with a forward written by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

His latest role on the world stage has been as a member of the Independent Inquiry Committee, which was appointed by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to probe the $64 billion Iraqi Oil for Food program. The U.N. program was initially designed to allow Iraq to sell oil for food so that ordinary Iraqis could survive U.N. sanctions that were imposed on that country after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

But the committee concluded in a preliminary report last month that the program was filled with corruption and lack of oversight as Saddam's regime was allowed to pocket $10.2 billion. The report also criticized Annan for not sufficiently investigating the role his son, Kojo, played in a Swiss company that was awarded an oil-for-food contract.

"The most important recommendation we made is to have appropriate financial oversight," Goldstone said of the U.N. "We've identified a number of areas where there aren't sufficient auditing controls and financial controls. When you're dealing with public funds, that's extremely important."

The final report on the Oil for Food program will be released by the end of the month, Goldstone said.

"That will name individuals and corporations that were involved in illegal kickbacks, bribes and violations of the U.N. Security Council's sanctions," he said. "We're going to be naming over 2,500 corporations from many countries."

Goldstone became a household name in South Africa when he chaired a national commission in the early 1990s that uncovered evidence of how police and military forces of the country's then-white dominated government had incited violence against the African National Congress.

The ANC was led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for his battles against apartheid. The apartheid government ultimately caved in, culminating in 1994 when Mandela became president of South Africa.

Goldstone then became chief prosecutor of the United Nations' war crimes tribunal at The Hague, a position he held from 1994-96. His office issued arrest warrants for 74 suspected Bosnian war criminals, only seven of whom had been apprehended.

That led Goldstone to harshly criticize the United States and other Western nations for not doing more to arrest the suspects. The number of individuals indicted for ethnic cleansing and other war crimes in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s has since climbed to 161, including former Yugolsav President Slobodan Milosevic.

"The NATO forces were not given orders in 1995, when there were indictments, to make arrests," Goldstone said of the suspected war criminals. "And the attitude of the United States military was that it wasn't its job."

But he said the lack of political will on the part of the West to arrest war crimes suspects likely contributed to prolonged maltreatment in the former Yugoslavia.

"That was an unfortunate mistake," Goldstone said. "It would have made Milosevic's position a lot more uncomfortable a lot earlier. It may well be that Milosevic would have been weakened and wouldn't have embarked on the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians in Kosovo."

His office also gained indictments against 21 individuals for the alleged 1994 government-sponsored genocide in Rwanda that resulted in the deaths of 800,000 people.

As Goldstone fulfilled his international duties, he continued to play a prominent role in his native country by serving as a justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1994 to 2003. He still serves as chancellor of the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa's largest university.

He is living in San Diego through December as eminent leader in residence at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. Following that assignment, he will continue to teach around the globe.

One of the few jobs that probably can be ruled out in his future is one he rejected several years ago.

When a new International Criminal Court was established at The Hague in 2002, Goldstone was approached to be its first chief prosecutor but turned down the offer.

"When you're alleging that someone is a war criminal, that is a huge responsibility," he said. "It's also the immensity of the investigation. You're investigating crimes where there are tens of thousands of victims.

"If you're going to do this you need to be absolutely 100 percent enthusiastic and I've done it once and frankly I didn't want to do it again."

Steve Kanigher is a Sun reporter. He can be reached at 259-4075 or by e-mail at steve@lasvegassun.com.