The Largest Minority

December 27th, 2006 by Manila Ryce

The death sentence handed to Saddam Hussein a month ago, for his role in the execution of 148 Shias, has been upheld by the Iraqi appeals court. Under Iraqi law, the sentence must now be carried out within 30 days. Iraq’s perfectly functioning government is supposed to have all capital sentences ratified by its head of state. However, Head of State Jalal Talabani has said that he would leave the job to his vice-presidents due to his opposition to the death penalty.

When Saddam was initially sentenced to death, Shia citizens celebrated the judgment while some Sunnis held protests and demanded the release of the ex-American ally. His American-backed hanging will surely elicit a violent response from an already divided country. Iraq’s delusional Kurdish foreign minister said he hoped the implementation of the sentence would bring about reconciliation between groups.

Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, spoke of the joys of state-sanctioned barbarism. “Today marks an important milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law. Saddam Hussein has received due process and legal rights that he denied the Iraqi people for so long.”

The judge also upheld the death sentences against Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother, and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, a former revolutionary court judge. Saddam is currently on trial for crimes against Iraq’s Kurdish population. His sentence will be carried out even if the trial is still in progress.

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November 21st, 2006 by Manila Ryce

Human Rights Watch has said that Saddam Hussein’s trial was so flawed that its verdict is unsound. The group cites “serious administrative, procedural and substantive legal defects” as Saddam’s chief defense lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, says he is now being blocked from filing appeal papers. According to Iraqi law, appeals must be made within a month of sentencing.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch group said the trials were the most important since the Nuremberg trials after World War II. The report said they “represent the first opportunity to create a historical record concerning some of the worst cases of human rights violations, and to begin the process of a methodical accounting of the policies and decisions that give rise to these events.”

The US-led Coalition Provisional Authority decided that the Dujail trial would be held by an Iraqi court in Iraq, ruling out an international tribunal or a mixed Iraqi-international court under UN auspices, the HRW report said. Because Iraqi lawyers and judges had been isolated from international criminal law, this decision resulted in a court that lacked the expertise to prosecute crimes against humanity on its own, the report said.

Defense counsel come under criticism in the report for trying to use the court as a political platform. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government was guilty of influencing the independence of the judges, the report said, to the extent that the first chief judge resigned. “Under such circumstances the soundness of the verdict is questionable,” HRW concludes. “In addition, the imposition of the death penalty - an inherently cruel and inhumane punishment - in the wake of an unfair trial is indefensible.”

The trial was marked by frequent outbursts from both judges and defendants. The original chief judge was replaced, three defense lawyers were murdered, and three out of five judges left the member panel. Defense lawyers boycotted proceedings, and the court-appointed counsel that took their place lacked sufficient training in international law. In addition, important documents were never given to Saddam’s lawyers, no written transcript was kept, and paperwork was often lost. The defense team was also prevented from cross-examining witnesses, while judges made asides that pre-judged Saddam Hussein.

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November 6th, 2006 by Manila Ryce

This is an old clip we decided to bring back to the main page because of its relevance to Saddam’s trial and the situation in Iraq as a whole. In light of groups in Iraq and the western world celebrating Saddam’s death sentence, I would like to clarify that I do not rejoice in the execution of any human being. Saddam’s death will merely divide Iraq further, with the only benefactors being US Republicans whose numbers have enjoyed a slight bump with this news.

Michael Berg, whose son was beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says it best. He talks about how pointless Zarqawi’s death is to him, and how careless it is to make Zarqawi a martyr. Berg’s rational argument is obviously not the emotional reaction this CNN reporter’s trying to pry from him. It is just as easy to imagine Berg saying the same thing about Saddam and his impending death.

November 6th, 2006 by Manila Ryce

Coming at a suspiciously convenient time for Republicans, deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was found guilty of “crimes against humanity”, receiving a sentence of death by hanging. Saddam’s half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of the former Revolutionary Court, were also sentenced to death at the gallows. Taha Yassin Ramadan, former Iraqi Vice President, received life in prison and three other co-defendants received as much as 15 years imprisonment.

Those who feared the verdict might intensify sectarian violence were unfortunately correct. One such altercation broke out immediately in north Baghdad’s heavily Sunni Azamiyah district. Police there battled militants with machine guns as at least seven mortar shells erupted near the Abu Hanifa mosque.

The sentences apply only to the massacre of 148 Shiites in Dujail in 1982 (when Hussein was a close ally of the Reagan Administration). Previous to the massacre, an unsuccessful assassination attempt was carried out against Saddam by the Shiite Dawa Party. The party was strongly opposed to the Iran-Iraq War being waged at the time with the support and encouragement of the US. Hussein managed to live through the three hour gunfight launched against his motorcade, and ordered a reprisal attack on the entire town. Around 1,500 were incarcerated and tortured. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland were destroyed, as was the town itself before it was shortly rebuilt by Saddam’s regime.

President Bush called the verdict “a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.” On a campaign tour for Republican candidates to win swing votes just two days before congressional elections, Bush continued, “The man who once struck fear in the hearts of Iraqis had to listen to free Iraqis recount the acts of torture and murder that he ordered against their families and against them.”

The president called the verdict a “major achievement for Iraq’s young democracy” despite the fact that Iraq is currently a police-state under a strict military curfew. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said the verdict was welcome news, but that the Iraqis “have traded a dictator for chaos” as their country has been destroyed by civil war since the US-led invasion.

One of Saddam’s lawyers, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, said earlier that the way Saddam’s trial was perceived would set important precedents in Iraq. “And unless it is seen as absolutely fair and is absolutely fair in fact, it will irreconcilably divide the people of Iraq.” Hussein could face more charges in relation to Kurdish slayings.

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July 2nd, 2006 by Manila Ryce

A new law abolishing the death penalty was passed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines before her trip to the Vatican. The law was met with criticism from anti-crime activists who think that Arroyo, a Roman Catholic, is trying to gain the Pope’s approval by passing it.

The Vatican’s envoy to Manila, Archbishop Fernando Filoni, said “We cannot speak about human rights when death penalty is imposed.”

Arroyo, herself, has been criticized for several human rights violations during her administration. The Philippines is by no means a political paradise. Perhaps this is what makes it even more embarrassing, that a third world country with third world problems can still teach Mr. Bush a thing or two about the “culture of life”.

May 19th, 2006 by Manila Ryce

An independent investigator has found that to fit police theories, crime lab analysts in Houston have regularly ignored results that conflicted with the expectations of police. Investigator Michael Bromwich wrote, “We have found a clear and troubling pattern of reluctance in the serology and DNA sections to report typing results that were not consistent with the blood types or DNA profiles of either the victim or a known suspect; in many such cases the results were reported as inconclusive.” Bromwhich’s team also found that tests and comparisons of evidence from crime scenes in the 80’s was never done by crime lab analysts in the vast majority of cases. In fact, complete lab tests were only run in 2 percent of cases from 1980, and less than 30 percent of cases in 1987. Such tests could’ve prevented the prosecution of innocent people.

“To date, investigators have identified 93 cases involving DNA or serology analysis with ‘major issues’ that raise doubts about the reliability of work and the accuracy of analysts’ conclusions.

Efforts to determine what went wrong in those cases were hampered by a lack of cooperation from former lab chief Donald Krueger; James Bolding, who led the DNA and serology divisions; and analyst Christy Kim, the report says… ‘Our inability to gather information from them in connection with our case reviews has hampered our ability to determine whether any of the most troubling cases we have found were the product of intentional scientific fraud,’ Bromwich wrote.”
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Sadly, this is not a unique case. Beyond moral hypocrisy, prosecution of the innocent is the secondary reason why capital punishment has no place in civilized societies. It has been estimated that around 100 innocent death row inmates have been executed. This number comes from the number of people executed since 1976, when capital punishment was reinstated in the United States, divided by the ratio of people we are finding innocent through DNA testing, which is 1 in 7. Also, the vast majority of states are refusing to reopen cases where a conviction was handed down before DNA testing. In cases where DNA testing was used it is often destroyed after the trial. This is because the courts do not want the fallibility of the legal system exposed by overturning 1 in every 7 cases.