June 23, 2006

Another Defense Lawyer Bites the Dust...

John Burns:

Saddam Hussein's trial on crimes against humanity was struck by new violence on Wednesday when a senior lawyer on his defense team was abducted, beaten and shot to death. The defense lawyer was the third to be killed since the trial began in October, and the 10th person associated with the court trying Mr. Hussein to be killed in the last 18 months.

According to his widow, the lawyer, Khamis al-Obeidi, 39, was asleep when at least 10 gunmen in civilian clothes stormed their home in the mostly Sunni Arab district of Slaikh at 7 a.m. and pulled him from bed within view of his three school-age children.

Witnesses said men linked to a Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, drove the lawyer through the streets of the Shiite slum of Sadr City shouting, "Terrorist!" before shooting him on a stretch of wasteland, then gathered around his corpse shouting, "Let Saddam save him now if he can!" and, "This is the fate of those who defend Saddam Hussein!"

Yes, and it is also the fate of those who put their trust in American and Iraqi authorities to provide basic security so that such court proceedings could take place amidst conditions of convincing order. Let's be clear. Saddam should have been packed off to the Hague, like other odious genocidaires such as Charles Johnson and Slobodan Milosevic, to stand trial for war crimes there. The thought that this inept spectacle constitutes some form of national reconciliation exercise is unconvincing in the extreme. To be sure, there will be a lot of chest-thumping Shi'a (not to mention Kurds, and even many Sunni) who will be thrilled as peach when Saddam gets the death penalty, of course. And, make no mistake, there's not the slightest smidgen of Saddam sympathy to be inferred in any of what I write above. What I was after, however, was a serious legal investigation and thorough vetting of the entire panoply of war crimes Saddam committed over the decades. We might have gotten that in the Hague. We're not in Baghdad, where his defense lawyers get slaughtered, willy-nilly, as they're dragged through the streets of Sadr City, medieval style.

Correction: Yes, yes; I meant Charles Taylor! Thanks for your E-mails....