Saddam on trial: The trial of Saddam Hussein sounds like a simple affair – he was one of the world's bloodiest dictators and faces a massive charge sheet. Yet the setting up of his trial risks new tension between Washington and its opponents.
Just last week the Iraqi Council announced it would set up a Special Tribunal in Baghdad to try Saddam and his henchmen.
Saddam’s charge sheet is awesome: he is directly responsible for the gassing of the Kurds in Halabja in the 1980s, and the persecution of the Shia Marsh Arabs in the 1990s.
Along with these atrocities go the execution, torture and terror inflicted on hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen through more than two decades of rule, plus the execution of Iranian prisoners of war and the looting of billions of dollars from the Iraqi people.
But such a trial risks big problems, firstly concerning whether this tribunal has the right to try him. The Special Tribunal has not got the backing of the Iraqi people.
And the US-allied council has rejected the idea of a UN court along the lines of the war crimes tribunal now trying Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague. Human rights groups and international jurists are likely to question the legitimacy of such a court, arguing that it is far from independent.
“The law establishing the Iraqi war crimes tribunal lacks essential elements to ensure legitimate and credible trials,” said Human Rights Watch director Mr Richard Dicker.
And Amnesty International criticised the governing council for issuing the new law with no attempt to consult the Iraqi people.
A second problem for the Iraqis is that they lack the experience to do the job themselves. There are no judges – except for those who worked for Saddam’s former regime. “They can’t use judges from the Baathist regime, and that leaves academics or exiles,” says war crimes expert Mr John Jones.
The fear among the Americans is that this inexperience might lead to a trial that spins out of control.