Saddam's Justice: Framework Of Genocide

UPI ^ | 10/16/2003 | P. Mitchell Prothero

[Ex-Dem]

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- What's often missed in the discussion about the crimes committed by Saddam Hussein's Baath Party regime, which killed thousands of Iraqis, is that most of the killings took place under the auspices of the rule of law.

"The Baath Party regime made their works and their activities legal by their experiences in running the country and with the rules of the law," said Sadeeq Saleem al-Shumari, a local attorney.

Shumari knows how these things work. He was a judge assigned to the special security services of Iraqi's legal system. In local parlance, he was a Mukhabarat judge, part of the dread security services that hunted down the perceived enemies of the regime. And in the mind of Saddam and his supporters, anyone could be such an enemy regardless of the evidence.

Many ruthless leaders terrorize their populations, but few did so with as much aggression and under as highly organized and codified a framework as Saddam.

"They (Saddam's regime) were experts at making whatever they wanted to do sound legal," Shumari said. "Everything they did was legal, that's why so many current judges have to be removed. They were manipulated and threatened by the system to allow the Baathists to do these things."

Shumari served for decades as a judge in most branches of the criminal courts, but it was his experience as a Mukhabarat judge that soured his career and sent him to private practice nearly 10 years ago. Although he remained a member of the Baath Party, it would have been dangerous for him to quit over moral objections, he says the behavior of the men he served repulsed him both morally and violated the rule of law he had dedicated his life to serving.

"Iraq was famous for its legal system," he says. "It was the highest members of the society that corrupted the system. They compromised the entire system (of justice) throughout all levels of the society.

"Despite all that, we have many good judges, only a few were really crooked. Most were just helpless."

He says an initially clean system turned bad with time.

"The police forces were able to reduce and solve crimes and they would have been mostly free of corruption," he says. "But over time it got worse. If the head of a fish spoils, it's not long before you can't eat the tail."

Shumari also dispels the popular belief among Iraqis that under Saddam the streets were free of crime. He says this simply was untrue after 1991.

"Crime was rising very fast," he says. "The regime was full of crime and the people saw it. The streets of Baghdad were not as safe from criminals as people say now."

It was Saddam's security services, however, that Shumari grew to hate the most.

"They would do whatever they wanted," he says. "The didn't distinguish between guilt and innocence. If a judge like myself stood up to them and ruled for innocence. That person was killed anyway."

Shumari points to the mass graves that permeate the soil of Iraq. Usually filled with Shiite Muslims, whom Saddam considered a threat because of their religious ties to Iran, these graves were not filled with illegal midnight murders. Instead they were the last step in a well thought out process of insane justice.

"Those that were killed and dumped into the mass graves; they were executed as part of a legal system," he says. "They were killed as part of the laws of Iraq - the regime could fake any evidence as part of the general orders for dealing with opposition to the regime."

Shumari stands up from his desk and goes to the bookshelf of his shabby office in a primarily Shiite neighborhood to read the law that send so many Shiites to horrible deaths.

"Section 156," he intones in the voice of a law profession. "Punishable by execution of anyone who undertakes any activity against the dignity of Iraq, or its unity, or the safety of its land. Or any activities that could lead to this."

He says this law, not unlike any law banning treason found in any nation, including the United States, which treats treason as punishable by death, was intended to be used to kill off political opposition. But Saddam used it against the religious Shiites.

"If someone joined the Dawa Party (a Shiite political movement promoting a Islamic republic similar to Iran's) maybe you could argue they deserve one or two years in prison because such a party was actually illegal," he says. " But under Section 156, they could kill anyone the Baathists thought might threaten their control of Iraq, not Iraq itself."

"Under Islamic law, it is almost impossible for anyone to get more than 20 years in prison unless they kill or rape someone," he says. "That's what (the Americans) were right to get rid of the execution penalty here in Iraq."

Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International

[Jewels1091]

He should come over here and talk to the democrats!