Convicted in a show trial that certainly appeared to have been timed to finish on the eve of last month's US elections, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hanged in a show execution that just as certainly seems to have been timed to be carried out before the end of the worst year of the Iraq War.

Hussein was a bad player -- a totalitarian dictator who, with tacit approval from the U.S. and other western nation during the 1980s, killed his own people and waged a mad war with Iran. He needed to be held to account. But even bad players deserve fair trials, honest judgments and justly-applied punishments. The former dictator got none of these.

According to Human Rights Watch, which has a long and honorable history of documenting and challenging the abuses of Hussein's former government, the execution early Saturday morning followed "a deeply flawed trial" and "marks a significant step away from respect for human rights and the rule of law in Iraq."

"The test of a government's commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders," says Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program. "History will judge these actions harshly."

For fifteen years, Human Rights Watch had demanded that Hussein be brought to justice for what the group has rightly described as "massive human rights violations." But the group argues that Hussein was not brought to justice.

In addition to objecting at the most fundamental level to the use of the barbaric practice of state-sponsored execution--which is outlawed by the vast majority of the world's nations--Human Rights Watch notes that Hussein was killed before being tried for some of his most well-documented acts of brutality.

The group notes the trial that did take place was fundamentally flawed.

A niney-seven-page report by Human Rights Watch, issued late last month, details the severe problems with the trial. The report, based on close monitoring of the prosecution of the former president, found that:

• "(The) Iraqi High Tribunal was undermined from the outset by Iraqi government actions that threatened the independence and perceived impartiality of the court."
  
• The Iraqi administrators, judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers lacked sufficient training and expertise "to fairly and effectively try crimes of this magnitude."
  
• The government did not protect defense lawyers--three of whom were killed during the trial--or key witnesses.
  
• "(There were) serious flaws in the trial, including failures to disclose key evidence to the defense, violations of the defendants' right to question prosecution witnesses, and the presiding judge's demonstrations of bias."
  
• "Hussein's defense lawyers had 30 days to file an appeal from the November 5 verdict. However, the trial judgment was only made available to them on November 22, leaving just two weeks to respond."

The report did not study the appeals process, But the speed with which the tribunal's verdict and sentence were confirmed suggests that the Iraqi Appeals Chamber failed to seriously consider the legal arguments advanced by Hussein's able--if violently harassed--legal team.

"It defies imagination that the Appeals Chamber could have thoroughly reviewed the 300-page judgment and the defense's written arguments in less than three weeks' time," said Dicker. "The appeals process appears even more flawed than the trial."

There will, of course, be those who counter criticism of the process by pointing out that Saddam Hussein did not give the victims of his cruel dictates fair trials or just sentences. That is certainly true.

But such statements represent a stinging indictment of the new Iraqi government and its judiciary. With all the support of the United States government, with massive resources and access to the best legal advice in the world, with all the lessons of the past, Iraq has a legal system that delivers no better justice than that of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

This is the ugly legacy of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq: An awful mess of a country that cannot even get the trial and punishment of deposed dictator right, a justice system that schedules the taking of life for political and propaganda purposes, a thuggishly brutal state that executes according to whim rather than legal standard.

According to Britain's Telegraph newspaper, "There was no comment from the White House, which was determined that the execution should appear to be an Iraqi event." The central role played by the US government in the process was not lost on the Telegraph, however, as the newspaper noted that: "the transfer of Saddam from American to Iraqi custody meant his death was imminent."

The term "transfer" is of course being used in a loose sense, as Hussein was hung not in an Iraqi prison but within the American-controlled Green Zone in central Baghdad.

Now that the killing is done, the governments of Iraq and the United States have confirmed what may have been the worst fear of those who condemned both Saddam Hussein and the US invasion and occupation that removed him from power. The crude lawlessness of Hussein has been replaced by the calculated lawlessness of a new regime.

John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. He is currently the editor of the editorial page of Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Times. Nichols is the author of two books: It's the Media, Stupid and Jews for Buchanan.  

© 2006 The Nation

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