"Trials and Tribulations: U.S. and Saddam"

The French lawyer Jacques Vergès reveals how he plans to secure a not-guilty verdict for his latest client - Saddam Hussein

Extract from: Trials and Tribulations
By Robert Chalmers, news.independent.co.uk

He is recognised, even by his enemies, as one of the greatest defence lawyers of his time. He says he was appointed to begin work on Saddam Hussein's case about a month ago.

"His nephew called me," he explains. "He said that he felt his uncle had been publicly humiliated, in contravention of the Geneva Convention."

Vergès himself has had no contact with the former Iraqi leader.

"We believe him to be in Qatar," he says. "But we don't know for certain where he is. He has been described by Mr Rumsfeld as a prisoner of war. In which case Saddam Hussein is entitled to the privileges of any such prisoner, including the right to silence."

The nephew - Ali Barzan al-Takriti, who lives in Amman - "told me that he was afraid the Americans would kill his uncle, because in the event of any free exchange in open court, the US is aware that it will be heavily implicated in his crimes."

Murdering their prisoner would hardly enhance the Americans' global reputation.

"My worry isn't that he will be killed by automatic gunfire," Vergès replies, "but that he might suffer a convenient accident which results in a stroke or a heart attack. His nephew told me - and I quote - 'This danger is imminent. I ask you to make our fears public, so as to render his murder less likely.'"

"In the opinion of his family, the Saddam Hussein we have seen paraded on television is heavily drugged. When a man is a prisoner of people who obey neither faith nor law," he adds, "they can despatch him in ways that do not require a machine gun or a knife."

"Are you saying that Bush and Blair are faithless and lawless?"

"I am saying that in this affair they have lied from the start. That's the first thing. We all know that their stated motive for war was bogus. And then there is the question of this public ex- hibition of their captive. It shows no regard for human dignity. You may recall that last month General Myers, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, referred to Fallujah as 'a rat's nest'. I don't recall even Hitler," Vergès adds, "calling enemy combatants 'rats'."

The US has declared its intention to try Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The process is theoretically under way: the director of the tribunal has been named as Salem Chalabi, a US-educated lawyer, and nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress. But the location, time and judicial framework remain undecided. Chalabi's mandate could be revoked, if and when power is handed over to a new administration on 30 June this year.

"For a fair trial to be held in Iraq," Vergès says, "it would require a penal code and a democratically elected administration. Neither exists."

"If and when a trial does take place," Vergès says, "I will argue that Mr Rumsfeld cannot escape being charged as a co-conspirator, since he was the intermediary for arms sales to Saddam Hussein. I am preparing the case on that basis."

"It's in English," Vergès said, "a language I don't speak fluently. I've sent it to be translated. But I can tell you that the papers contain a word-for-word exchange between an Iraqi diplomat and Henry Kissinger. And Kissinger is basically saying: "Our intelligence is disheartening - it indicates that you are supported by the USSR. Conditions exist whereby contacts may be re-established; the US and Iraq can become allies."

"Whatever the level of western hypocrisy in this affair," I ask Vergès, "how can you contemplate defending a man who ordered the gassings at Halabja and who, according to a study by the group Human Rights Watch, was responsible for the death of up to 100,000 Kurdish non-combatants in the first eight months of 1988 alone?"

"My position on that, as a defence lawyer," replies Vergès, "is that you must first prove to me those acts were committed, and secondly that they were committed by Saddam Hussein. But in any case - even if those things were done on his orders - they were done with weapons supplied by the US. If you provide a country with poison gas and biological weapons it is for one purpose only. When a crime is committed, you can't pursue only one of the guilty parties."

"The charge against the US being?"

"Complicity, by reason of supplying the means to commit a crime. I don't see how, in an international court of law, the Americans * could begin to justify supplying Iraq with chemical weapons. And there is absolutely no doubt that they did."

"While we're on the subject, wasn't it Jacques Chirac who provided Saddam Hussein with nuclear materials, for a power station, at a time when it was known he might have alternative ambitions for those supplies?"

"Yes," says Vergès, "but nothing came of that, because the Israelis destroyed the material on the ground."

The Americans, he insists, are guilty of complicity "at every stage". "They gave Saddam Hussein the green light for the attack on Kuwait," he alleges, referring to remarks made by April Glaspie, US ambassador to Iraq, eight days before the August 2 1990 invasion; Glaspie told Saddam Hussein the US had "no position" on the dispute between Iraq and its neighbour.

"After the Gulf War," he adds, "the US dropped leaflets inciting the Shi'ites and the Kurds to rebel and, when they did rise up, abandoned them. I will argue that the ultimate effect of that was to make the US co-conspirators with Saddam Hussein." Then there were the economic sanctions, says Vergès, "that resulted, in that famous assessment by the World Health Organisation, in the death of 500,000 children."

Is Tony Blair, according to his thesis, guilty of indictable offences?

"I believe I can demonstrate that the Geneva Convention is breached in Iraq on a daily basis. These are war crimes that can be punished under international penal accords to which Britain is a signatory but the US is not. I am not ruling out action against the British on those grounds." Full Article