Saddam's Execution - Is it an injustice?
Have we just seen another one of the biggest injustices the world has seen lately? The illegal execution of a leader of a country - and his two co-defendants, one, a judge - who acted as any other leader would; removed, illegally tried, and executed by the same people who appointed him there and told him what to do over the years. Saddam Hussein, as well as his two co-defendants half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former Iraqi chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar, were also executed.
Let me make it clear, I do not think he was a good leader, but neither are the rest out there, and neither are the ones who put him there to begin with in order to have access to all the natural resources and land to test their latest weapons over the years, not to mention control over the region.
I do not think he was a good leader, but he still deserved a FAIR trial, as any other leader would have. The leaders ( Ariel Sharon, Rafael Eitan, Elie Hobeika to name some) responsible for the Sabra & Shatila massacre roamed free after their actions, until some of them met their fate eventually while others died of natural causes later in life.
The International Criminal Tribunal indicted both Ratko Mladić and Radovan_Karadžić back in 1996 for their crimes but they can still walk free.
Twenty Four major war criminals and six criminal organizations of the Nazi Regime were indited and given "fair trials" for their war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Nuremberg Trials where each of the four countries provided one judge and an alternate, as well as the prosecutors. There are two sides to this.. One could say that is an example of how such trials should be done. Yet, the very validity of the court has been questioned, and I quote,
* The defendants were not allowed to appeal or affect the selection of judges. Some have argued that, because the judges were appointed by the victors, the Tribunal was not impartial and could not be regarded as a court in the true sense. A. L. Goodhart, Professor at Oxford, opposed this view, writing:
"Attractive as this argument may sound in theory, it ignores the fact that it runs counter to the administration of law in every country. If it were true then no spy could be given a legal trial, because his case is always heard by judges representing the enemy country. Yet no one has ever argued that in such cases it was necessary to call on neutral judges. The prisoner has the right to demand that his judges shall be fair, but not that they shall be neutral. As Lord Writ has pointed out, the same principle is applicable to ordinary criminal law because 'a burglar cannot complain that he is being tried by a jury of honest citizens.'" ("The Legality of the Nuremberg Trials", Juridical Review, April, 1946.)* The main Soviet judge, Nikitchenko, had taken part in Stalin's show trials of 1936-1938.
One of the charges included conspiracy to commit aggression against Poland in 1939. The Secret Protocols of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August, 1939, proposed the partition of Poland between the Germans and the Soviets; however, Soviet leaders were not tried for being part of the same conspiracy.* In 1915, the Allied Powers, Britain, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging, for the first time, another government (the Sublime Porte) of committing "a crime against humanity." The argument could be made it was not until the phrase was further developed in the London Charter that it had a specific meaning. As the London Charter definition of what constituted a crime against humanity was unknown when many of the crimes were committed, it could be argued to be a retrospective law.
* The trials were conducted under their own rules of evidence; the indictments were created ex post facto and were not based on any nation's law; the tu quoque defense was removed; and some claim the entire spirit of the assembly was "victor's justice". Article 19 of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal Charter reads as follows:
"The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to be of probative value."
Torture? Justice? You're talking of the same countries and powers that not only turn a blind eye on the atrocities done in Abu Gharib Prison, allowing the people responsible to walk free or be charged with simple charges, but the illegal detaining and torture of so called "terrorists" in Guantanamo Bay, when even President Bush, leader of the country that promotes freedom and justice, did not have the authority to set up the war crimes tribunals and that the commissions were illegal under both military justice law and the Geneva Convention.
This is just the tip of the iceburg. Seriously, what has this world come to? Is true democracy dead? Did it ever exist in the first place? Or is it a good idea if implemented well, as true communism would have been too?
Bookmark this site
Post new comment