The Great IRAQ!

Thursday, July 27, 2006

[Arabic translation of this document]
A STATEMENT about the SESSION of the 26th of

July 2006

The Court Insists on Breaching the Law

The proceedings of the 39th session of the High Iraqi Criminal Court which is trying President Saddam Hussein and his comrades in the Dujail case proved once again in its persistence to deprive President Saddam Hussein and his comrades of the minimum chance to defend himself. By rebuking the Defense lawyers and stating political attitudes that reveal the lack of impartiality, the Court exploited the immediate broadcasting to falsify the facts. It became evident that we are facing pre-judgments which are made by those who stand behind the Court.

All what is the Defense is required to do is to give legitimacy to such pre-judgments. The Defense was not allowed to amend the track so that this trial comes nearer to the minimum requirements for a fair trial. This has become evident by:

- The detaining American military enforced President Saddam Hussein to attend this session despite his refusal and despite the fact that he was on hunger strike.

- The Court imposed appointed lawyers who are employees in the Defense Office to read a statement which was prepared by William Wiley despite the fact the President has objected to this and stated that he is still holding on to have lawyers of his choosing.

- The (defense) statements included convicting evidence against the President and his comrades which constitute a violation to all the professional codes which obligates the defense counsel to do his utmost effort in defending – and not convicting his client. Those employees asked the Court's mercy for their client so that he can avoid a death sentence as if they see that it is the due punishment.

- The Court prevented the President from stating the arguments he wanted to make by threatening that he may be subject to be charged with incitement to kill the Iraqis and by claiming that it is forbidden to raise political issue. In fact the presiding judge revealed repeatedly and in an offensive and extensive manner, his political attitudes regarding what is happening in Iraq nowadays and also during the rule of President Saddam Hussein. In addition to that, the judge admitted a political address which condemns the regime of the President and applauds the government appointed by the occupation. Such political address is contained in the statement of William Wiley and which was translated to Arabic in a style and terminology that is unfamiliar in the field of the Iraqi judiciary.

- The Court rebuked the defense counsel of the client's choosing. It alleged that they have received millions although it is known for all that all the Defense lawyers are volunteers who committed to do all the professional duties of defending their clients.

The reasons that made them suspend their attendance were imposed upon them as they were denied any opportunity to present an actual and comprehensive defense case. Their position is supported by the Arab Lawyers Union and most of the international legal organizations.

The Defense Committee urges the public opinion and all the concerned organizations to have a say in the violations that impaired this trial and join us in demanding to stop it in order to boost the principles and rules of law and justice.

ISNAD The Defense Committee

26th of July 2006 for President Saddam Hussein

and his Comrades

P.O. Box 841073 Amman, 11181 Jordan
Phone ; 00962(06)5166679 & Fax : 00962(06)5166679
Email : isnad@wanadoo.jo
Ref: www.albasrah.net/

¶ 1:12 AM

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

I Love You Baghdad as much as I hate Bush!

To Return to preveous page

¶ 12:20 PM

Cairo, Sunday 23 July 2006

EMERGENCY ACTION: LEBANON
CALL FOR A GENERAL STRIKE

Public demonstrations are essential, but even more is demanded of us. The system has to be disrupted completely if there is to be any chance of minimizing the casualties of Israel's coming ground invasion and re-occupation of South Lebanon.

We call on all workers, all management, all professions, all unions and syndicates, and all Arabs to begin immediately a general strike.

We appeal especially to dockers, oil workers and airport workers. Anyone who has a position in the supply chain for Israel should act on their conscience.

This action is needed now. We believe the invasion will begin this week.

General strike, now!

Hana Abdul Ilah Al-Bayaty, BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee

Ian Douglas, BRussells Tribunal Advisory Committee

Spread this call for action

We call on people who endorse this call for action to diffuse it widely.

Below are excerpts of a statement released by The BRussells Tribunal Committee:

Israel’s wanton bombing of Lebanese civilians is an unequivocal war crime

States are obliged to protect Lebanon, militarily if necessary, lest international law become a travesty

If the Security Council won’t act, the General Assembly can and must

Following the intended destruction of the Iraqi state and society by the United States and the brutal military repression by Israel of the Palestinians' rightful struggle for self-determination, no one can maintain that the United States and Israel — global tyrant and regional proxy — have anything but the most contemptuous plans for the Arab world and its people.

Not only do we have to stomach a barrage of lies and endless attempts by Bush and his paymasters to enact their own version of the domino theory across the Middle East, last week witnessed the beginning of what could be the endgame: one that likely will lead to a major, multi-state regional war which surely would include, sooner or later, the use of nuclear weapons.

From Iraq to Palestine and across all the crooked pro-Washington Arab regimes, the US alliance with Israel — which now has reached insane proportions of mutual devotion — has brought nothing but torture, violence and mass destruction to the Arab world. The opening years of the second millennium have crystallized all the injustice of the last century. And in this conspiracy, corporate media plays a willing, opportunist role.

Now we are obliged to sit back and watch Lebanese citizens be exterminated in an orgy of Israeli violence. We refuse. We are cajoled to believe that Israel is the victim and the only fair-playing actor in the Middle East. We do not believe.

The right to resist
The resistance operation that was the alleged trigger for Israel’s latest foray of war crimes was legitimate under international law. Despite Israel’s withdrawal from much of South Lebanon in 2000, it has continued to occupy the Shebaa Farms area, contrary to UN determinations, kept thousands of prisoners, as well as routinely violate Lebanese sovereignty with flyovers by Israeli warplanes.

For over a quarter of a century, customary international law has explicitly sanctioned the use of “all means” necessary to achieving effective self-determination for peoples under colonial rule or occupation. There are hundred of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon since 1948 whom Israel refuses the right to return to their homes, as stated in resolution 194 of the General Assembly of the UN. The nature of Israel’s colonial designs on Lebanon is well established. So long as Israel occupies Lebanese land, Hizbullah — or any other popular force — has a right under international law to repel and resist that occupation. Nothing in international law prohibits the taking of prisoners of war, which Israel’s captured soldiers are.

Whether Israel likes it or not that its colonial plans are resisted by those it would subjugate, nothing permits it to displace its fury upon a civilian population. This is what it is doing.

Israeli colonialism
Israel’s bombing of Lebanon has nothing to do with two soldiers. Bush and advisors are saying now that Hizbullah should be addressed militarily: that a ceasefire “won’t solve the problem,” which in their view is resistance to US-Israeli colonial plans.

History has taught repeatedly that no grievance is ever forgotten until justice is attained. Thus, it is impossible to separate Israel’s bombing of Lebanon from its history as a state founded on the dispossession of another national entity — the Palestinians. It is also impossible for Israel to achieve its ends through force, just as the United States has failed in Iraq.

The State of Israel claims, nonetheless, a free hand to do whatever it wishes, wherever it wishes. In this, the US is its most valued apologist.

It is time that the Middle East ceases to be the abyss around which the entire world revolves for the sake of the State of Israel. The attempts to justify Israel’s state of exception — a racist conception of blood purity and regional supremacy — have poisoned not only the Middle East but world politics as a whole. Yet Israel continues to be given carte blanche; permission to kill and destroy in violation of the numerous instruments of international human rights and humanitarian law aimed at codifying the most basic moral principles of human relations.

Justice means addressing the unjustifiable exception to all contemporary norms that is Israel. Justice will begin when the world admits what it knows about Israeli strategic intentions, and acts to end Israeli colonialism.

The BRussells Tribunal Committee

http://brusselstribunal.org

Arabic ranslation of this article

¶ 12:10 PM

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Who Killed the Electric Car? Why?
Here is the answer:
Bush Did! Why? .. Here is the story:

To return to previous page

¶ 5:36 AM

Handwritten letter from President Saddam Hussein to the American people. 7 July 2006.

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Mercy-giving.

“And among the Believers are men who are true to that which they pledged to God. Some of them have fulfilled their pledge by death and some of them still are waiting and they have not altered in the least. That God may reward the true men for their truth and punish the hypocrites if He will, or relent towards them, for God is forgiving, merciful. And God repulsed the infidels for their wrath. They gained no good. God averted their attack from the Believers. God is strong, mighty.” [Qur’an 33:23-25].

To the American people:

Peace upon those who believe in peace and desire it, and the mercy of God and His blessings.

I address you in this letter from the place of my confinement, as my attempt on the basis of my moral, human, and constitutional responsibility so that no one among you might say that no one came to us with a message of peace after the war began, refuting the arguments for it and desiring peace for you and for our upright, loyal, heroic people. And as I say this, I do no know whether my brothers and comrades who are leading the Resistance outside the prison have come to you with a letter before or not. That is because the “democracy” of your leaders has prevented me since my arrest and until now from getting newspapers and magazines or hearing radio and television and has isolated me from the world and has isolated the world from me so that I might not hear or see anything from outside my place of confinement.

Is this the true face of democracy and human rights that they advocate outside America!? Or have your rulers lied about it? This includes the killing of people in prisons and jails, some of them by means of the pistols of the American investigators. Or has all of this along with other details that would turn an attentive person’s hair white been concealed from you by your officials such that you do not know the truth!?

Anyway, I address you with this letter of mine in the hope that it will reach you and that you will hear it or read it. And on the basis of my responsibility to bring the facts before people, whatever their color or nationality, for that is our duty to them, just as they have a duty to us not to accept evil.

I address you today as my attorney the eminent lawyer and Professor Ramsey Clark has asked that I write this letter of mine to you. Professor Ramsey has presented an excellent example of a humanitarian in his person and in his colleague Professor Curtis Dobler, both of whom left a positive personal impression on me. On this occasion I wish to salute their courage as they have volunteered for the task although they know the dangers that surround them in carrying out their duty, in particular after criminals have killed four of the defense attorneys.

People of America, it still seems to me that the officials in your government are still lying to you and are not giving you true explanations of the reasons that led them to embark on their aggression against Iraq. In what they have said about the reasons they have deceived, from the starting point, not only the international community, and in particular the European Community but also the peoples of America themselves, knowing beforehand that the facts were contrary to what they were declaring. Untrue is what they said, after their lies were exposed, about having been deceived by their intelligence agencies and by the stooges that they brought along to serve as their puppets in Iraq, just as old imperialism and the old empires of the 19^th and 20^th centuries used to do. What we are saying is based on many facts, the major ones being as follows:

1. The inspection teams – that came to Iraq in the name of the United Nations and carried out searches even of some private houses as well as government departments, presidential palaces and government documents – those teams knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction because most of the leading members in those teams were Americans and British and in addition they had spies and volunteers of other nationalities. Those teams searched Iraq piece by piece from one end to the other and never found any information contrary to what they and others were told by Iraqi government representatives. The inspections lasted for more than seven years. And in addition to the teams that traveled by car and on foot, they used spy planes, helicopters, and satellites in space. The American and English officials thought that this was their historic chance to strike Iraq and destroy its legitimate aspirations and the lofty cultural and scientific achievements made in the course of 35 years, making use of the information gathered by their spies in the inspection teams and making use of the so-called war on terror after the 11 September incident that struck America. They shuffled the cards to bring up the goals that they had already decided upon earlier, and these were not the goals that they publicly announced at the starting line.

It was their assessment that the unjust embargo had not destroyed Iraq’s will nor halted its legitimate aspirations to develop economically, culturally, scientifically, and as a civilization in the conditions of a new independence. They believed that Iraq had come close at that time to breaking the economic embargo as the result of the cooperation of those who cooperated with Iraq on the basis of mutual benefit and fraternal national feelings as far as the Arabs were concerned. The officials in your country thought that this was their chance to impose their will on the world by means of their control of the Middle East’s oil and its production and marketing in new ways and for new goals – those about which we spoke in and before the year 2003 – in addition to attaining one of their Zionist goals and winning support in the election. Iran and its lackeys played a dirty role in making aggression appear attractive and in facilitating its implementation.

2. The American officials did not withdraw from Iraq after they became hard pressed, but declared that the facts were contrary to what they had claimed before the invasion that took place in March and April of the year 2003. If they had been truthful when they claimed that they had been deceived as a result of the information they had been given and which they used as the cover for their invasion, and which they declared at the time was sufficient justification for the invasion – declaring at the time that it involved things that they said affected the security of the United States – then they would have withdrawn from Iraq after discovering that that information had been false. They would have apologized to the heroic Iraqi people, to the American people and to the people of the world for what they had done.

None of the Americans asked their government before the war how Iraq, a country that had still not emerged from backwardness, could threaten the security of a country like America across the Atlantic. And for that matter why would Iraq want to threaten America, which at that time had not violated the territory of Iraq. If the American officials wanted to promote the claim that Iraq’s threat was precisely involved in the opposing stances taken by Iraq and America over the Zionist occupation of the land of Palestine and other Arab land, it could be said that Iraq is not the only state that takes an opposing stance to that of America in regards to the issue, whether that be Arab states or other states in the world. Furthermore, who has authorized America to make the countries of the world tailor their policies to America’s measurements, and if they don’t oblige, then war should be waged against them? How can one understand America’s call for democracy if it does not permit a difference of opinion even in issues of a regional character, to say nothing of international ones?

Another lie was the claim of American officials that Iraq had links to what they called terrorism, although British Prime Minister Blair declared that Iraq does not have any ties to so-called terrorism and had no internationally prohibited weapons, forcing Bush to declare the same thing. Despite that, none of the important American personalities asked President Bush on what sort of rational analysis or what sort of realistic information this claim rested. Do you know, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, why they didn’t ask? Because some of your prominent personalities are directed in what they do by hidden forces that distorted the image you received of Iraq’s positions. They had been laying the groundwork for years to facilitate aggression from the start. Therefore no one asked the American officials, for example, why no Iraqi took part in the events of 11 September!? And if the participation of individuals in the attack on American targets isn’t to be taken as proof of the involvement of any country in those events, then how do you accuse a state like Iraq, the features of whose political system are known, of so-called relations with terror? How can you consider this charge to be one of only two on the basis of which aggression was launched against the people of Iraq, destroying their property and achievements and bringing their lives under daily and direct threat?

Do you know, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, that I asked one of the American officials who talked with me perhaps two weeks after my arrest, just what was it that you based those false charges on? He said that as far as the weapons of mass destruction were concerned, “we didn’t have anything to confirm what you were saying.” And as for the links to terrorism, he said, because you, Saddam Hussein, did not send a letter of condolence to President Bush after the incident [of 11 September].

I smiled bitterly and told him: as regards your claim that you didn’t have confirmation of our statements, it seems that your officials lie and imagine that officials in countries around the world do not tell the truth, or that many of those who have relations with you in fact do not tell you the truth, neither when they oppose your policies nor when they agree with them. This is a dangerous matter, not only for the countries of the world but because they then pose a danger for America as well, if nobody in the world will tell America: ‘this is a mistake’ and ‘this is unacceptable’! And at that time when American planes were striking targets in Iraq and destroying public and private property, killing Iraqi citizens including women and children for no reason and imposing on Iraq their unjust embargo, prohibiting Iraq from importing even pencils for children to use in primary schools, what exactly is it that should obligate Saddam Hussein to send a telegram of condolences to the president of the state whose officials have committed all those crimes, unless it be out of hypocrisy and weakness? But because I am neither a hypocrite nor a weakling I didn’t send Bush a telegram of condolence. But I did agree on the telegram sent containing condolences in the name of the government of Iraq and sent by Comrade Tariq Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister, to our friend Ramsey Clark and through him to the stricken families.

Are the great states so deluded as to imagine that whoever does not send a letter of condolence deserves that war should be waged against him, his country, and his people!? Here you see how the American officials used even your own blood to promote their reckless, aggressive policy. Is this the kind of morality that people should have? Or men? Or officials? There is nothing graver than for disasters to ravage people who have been stricken by delusions, committed wrongs, and wantonly despised the roles of others. The worst disease of the American officials who involved the Americans in war against Iraq is this.

3. After I was arrested they made vain attempts to use intimidation and threats against me. One of their generals conveyed that intimidation and host threats and tried to bargain with me, promising to let me live if I agreed to read in my own voice and sign a prepared announcement that was shown to me. That stupid announcement called on the people of Iraq and the courageous Resistance to lay down arms. They said that if I refused, my fate would be that I would be shot just like Mussolini, as my interlocutor put it. But, as you know me and would expect of me, I disdainfully refused, not even touching that dirty document with my hand and sullying myself with it. I told them if I were given the chance to address my people, I would call them to more resistance.

Seven days later, to reinforce themselves, they sent a group to talk with me. They said they were from an American University and that they wanted to engage me in a broad discussion. I agreed and I confirmed to them that Iraq didn’t have any of the things the American officials claimed and I advised them [the US] to leave Iraq quickly and apologize to the people, warning them that they were going to get what they now are facing and what they are now embroiled in – in fact, the fate I expect for them is worse than what they are facing now – and they will never have an adequate chance to pull their arms and equipment out of Iraq if the two halves of Iraq engulf them, and they will engulf them, God willing, because our people are deeply rooted and conscious. They know that our liberation can be clean and complete only with their unity, and that tolerance must be the basis for the orientations of our people within their ranks, and that wounds must be bound up, not ripped open.

I say, I told them all that at that time but they didn’t change their methods; they didn’t replace the keys of falsehood, and they are still knocking on the doors of wrong, failing to try the door of legitimacy, even though they now know. In this connection, attached to this letter are some verses from a long ode; a selection of 56 verses. [Not translated here.]

4. It is neither reasonable nor convincing that a country like America to which the doors of the intelligence agencies in the east and most of the countries of the west have been opened did not know the truth and could not know the truth. Although I am convinced and believe that many countries in the world have an interest in war or wars, she [the United States] does not have an interest in war even though she might believe she does. The contrary, in fact, is the case.

America is a big country on the other side of the Atlantic. It has developed a unique unparalleled power such that I think some people there imagine that it is on its way to attaining the crown of the world all for itself as a world empire. Have they not learned a lesson from their war in Viet Nam? The west used to promote the idea that world Communism and the Soviet bloc threatened their interests and also the security of the entire west. But despite that promotion, this was nothing but a flimsy cover. Nevertheless, America used it and wrapped itself in it until the heroic Vietnamese people expelled them by force.

As to their invasion of Iraq, it came in a situation that made the first step easy from the standpoint of the reaction of the international community because of the international balance of forces. But it came in a situation that might make it more costly that its war in Viet Nam. That is because when America was expelled from Viet Nam it did not lose its standing, or we might say it only lost a small part of its standing. But when it is expelled and routed from Iraq, which has no great power to support it directly, it will lose the fundamental basis of its standing.

In fact it has now already lost the foundation for that standing and its reputation has begun to decay. It is no longer able to wield the big stick that it formerly threatened to use. It used to accomplish more by threatening to use force than by really using force. I will go further and say that after its war in Iraq, that stick no longer frightens many people and America has come to need the silence of the smallest and simplest countries and tries to please them in order to get them to stay quiet about America’s crimes and reckless, deviant policies.

Before, many of the world’s countries used to court the United States and most countries in the world, all except a few, used to fear her threats or parried them with defensive arguments. But now Mao Zedong of fond memory is laughing in his grave because his prediction has been fulfilled and America is a paper tiger. This is by the will of the Living Eternal God, and by His agents on earth, the heroic Mujahideen in glorious, virtuous, militant, jihadist Iraq. So God bless the heroic people of Iraq and God bless the jihad and the mujahideen.

Esteemed ladies and gentlemen of the peoples of America, the time has come to an end in which greatest and best-equipped armies could scatter the organized formations of the opposing army and thereby bring a war to a close. Now you see our courageous army, our heroic people, and our Mujahideen replacing the system of organized formations with a new kind of warfare. And when the Americans on the ground become targets in the vicinity of the guns of the revolutionaries, who attack them as deadly human bombs with nothing more than their bodies filled with faith in God, American superiority is worn down over time. In fact in the near future that superiority will become a burden whose equipment will be difficult to withdraw. So, will America trust the voice of rationality and logic that calls for the preservation of what still remains, or will Satan the deceiver and the hate-filled supporters of Zionism keep pushing the Americans until the waves swallow them and they sink to the depths of the raging sea?

Who, after all, appointed the American government to be the world policeman, to form the world in the mold that it likes, giving national orders to the countries of the world?

Saddam Hussein, ladies and gentlemen, is an honorable patriot and an honest man. He is a statesman resolute in implementing the law, just, but benevolent. He loves his people and his nation. He is straightforward, doesn’t double-cross or deceive. He speaks the truth even against himself. Do tyrants like Bush like such characteristics? If he were a person like De Gaulle or even like Reagan, perhaps he would understand them, or at least would not abhor them. But I must say to you that your country will discover more, esteemed ladies and gentlemen. It has lost his reputation and his standing. Indeed the American who used to travel around the world respected and safe and welcomed wherever he went, is now no longer able to step outside America without a mine detector. And the State Department issues warnings for you constantly about what world regions are dangerous to American lives

It was American officials and their polices themselves that have created an atmosphere of anti-American hatred in the world by means of their arrogant behavior, their haughty aggressive attitude, their lack of respect for international law and the security of the world – including the security of my Arab Nation through their support for the Zionist entity in Palestine – and other world and human issues.

Today you are in a bad predicament with the world and nobody can rescue you but yourselves. If you reform, you will open for the world and for yourselves a new opportunity. But if you are heedless, that is your decision. What you need is free and fair competition and peace in order to have security.

The years that followed the 18^th century had long gone when they came as invaders to the Middle East to bring back memories of things that awaken and arouse. The Middle East, and the Arab homeland in particular, was the cradle of prophets and messengers from God. Is the cradle of the prophets, where the prophets are buried in their tombs, also the home of devils and their mirror images – the malicious invaders?

We have believed, and our faith was suited to us,

Then came the Zionists with a devil for a guide.

They stormed in on us as invaders, unjust.

The did not stop their advance nor sit still,

Their diabolical patron has prepared their dilemma.

But as for us, we have the Merciful God as Patron.

People of America, despite the crimes your government inflicted on our people, our Arab Nation and humanity, the people of Iraq – and I mean by that the Iraqis, not those with split loyalties who prefer to serve foreigners rather than their own people – I say the free people of Iraq even in their present circumstances are not thinking about their destiny alone but about the destiny of others wherever it’s possible to create a solution that treats a painful problem.

On this basis I said to some Americans when I was in my prison, why don’t you come to an agreement with the Resistance to designate a country with a charter and power to which the Resistance can hand over those American soldiers whom they capture, rather than executing them as currently is said to be taking place. In fact the extent to which the Resistance is responsible for this is unknown, but people who are equitable know that America has not abided by international law in any of its activities in Iraq, including the Geneva Conventions regarding prisoners and detainees. The Resistance has no secure place in Iraq where prisoners can be kept. So whether the Resistance is at all responsible, or whether the responsibility lies with some other parties that have no connection to the Resistance, the justification for it is that there is no secure place for prisoners to be kept.

Therefore in order to fulfill humanitarian needs and to eliminate the justification [for killing prisoners] I make this proposal to you and to the national Resistance and to anyone concerned, and I make this with the best of intentions. If you accept it and respect the Geneva Conventions then the argument of those who kill rather than detain prisoners will have vanished. But if your government does not accept it, then it will bear the responsibility for refusing and for whatever befalls our people and the heroic Resistance as a result of your government’s violation of international law. This will be particularly true if the number of American prisoners increases in the future, and we think that it will increase. Or is it that your government can’t see anything until it feels it?

Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, the time has come for your government to look at all people as equals before international law regardless of the size of the countries to which they belong. Whoever violates international law in his policies and the behavior of his army, he alone must bear the consequences for that policy. And if his policies are not in accordance with the letter of international law, he has no right to call others to protect his rights in accordance with that law.

Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, whoever missed his or her chance to take action to try to prevent the war still has a chance to act to end it and bring back peace and freedom to Iraq in accordance with the choice of its people without foreign interference by anyone whoever that may be.

People of America, I address you not from weakness nor as a supplicant. I, my people, my brothers, comrades, and my nation – we address you on the basis of our moral and human responsibility. I tell you that officials whom you know, and first among them your President, lied to you and deceived you and tricked you using the media that portrayed Iraq to you as incorrigible, and Saddam Hussein as a hateful dictator, and that his people hate him and that his people are just waiting for their chance to get at him. Some of them just wallowed in lying falsehood to the point that they openly declared that the Iraqis would meet the invading armies with roses and celebration.

I know that lots of people don’t do a lot of analysis; they don’t have the time or the ability or the desire to do careful assessments when presented with falsified news so as to uncover the truth. The American peoples had no chance to inquire, for example: why, if the people of Iraq hate Saddam Hussein, how he managed to defeat the Iran of Khomeini after eight years in the aggressive war that Iran sought to impose on us under the slogan of exporting the revolution beginning with Iraq? People of America, the victory over Khomeini’s Iran was not due to the short length of the war, but came only after eight years of grinding warfare in which tens of thousands fell and hundreds of thousands on the Iranian side.

Then if Saddam Hussein were a dictator, why did he establish a parliament with elections for the first time in the year 1980 during wartime, when there had been no parliament in Iraq since 1958? If he and his government were dictators, how could he visit schools, universities, towns, and villages and spend the night with the people wherever the sun went down? How could he travel around and lead at the battle front at night and during the day even in the trenches in the front lines on the battlefield among the Muslim soldiers!?

Yes, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, your government deceived you, and you, or rather most of you, had no chance to inquire of themselves or of others in order to discover the truth because the Zionists in the lobby who advocated the war together with some of the centers of power were deceiving you and tricking you, hiding from your eyes the real truth, exchanging the facts for falsified and slanted information. Last but not least in this regard, if Saddam Hussein were a dictator hated and despised by his people, how is it that his people endured him and why was he chosen President by referendum?

People of America, the misfortunes that have afflicted you and afflicted our Arab Nation and within it our heroic Iraqi people – including the breakdown of America’s standing and reputation – were only caused by the reckless behavior of your government and by pressure from Zionism and power centers that influenced the government to commit those crimes and scandalous actions for specific ends that have nothing to do with the interest of the American peoples. The massacres and blood that now flows in the streets and countryside of Iraq in torrents – the responsibility for that falls on America before all others. You know, or rather you have now come to learn, that neither the stooges whom the American forces brought in on board their aircraft or as shamefaced presents aboard their tanks, nor Iran, which pushed and still pushes forward those who support it and whom they support, would be able to cause the bloodshed, or the destruction of the honor, and property of our people and our state had not America undertaken the aggression and invasion and issued the orders. It is still issuing orders in the Green Zone. Therefore America bears the burden of all those crimes and outrages. So, will you put an end to what is going on by using the methods of direct truth without evasion and digression? Or will you invite the machine of death to continue to eat away at the flesh of Iraqis and the flesh of Americans without doing anything to resolve this?

It is your historical responsibility, esteemed ladies and gentlemen. If you reform, you could save what remains of the standing and reputation of America and its legitimate interests. If you do nothing, you will be keeping silent over something evil. “God grant us patient perseverance and let us die as Muslims.” [Qur’an, 7:126]

People of America, the wars that your government promotes in the world – one of them being the war in Iraq – with input from certain centers of power – which you know better than we – are not in the interests of the American people. You know better than many how you paid in blood so that you might liberate yourselves from British colonialism and after that how the United States of America was unified and what rivers of blood were shed in order for that to come about. So, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, how do you accept this interference that abases America before it abases Iraq? How can you accept not only the invasion but becoming mired in the internal affairs of Iraq? You know that Iraq is a land of prophets, messengers, and righteous figures. You know that Baghdad is the fourth holiest city in the Arab homeland – after Mecca, al-Madinah, and Jerusalem – in the sight of all of the Islamic world and all of our Arab Nation. How can one imagine that Iraq could reconcile itself to colonial rule, even if it comes, this time, under another name and with other slogans? Save your country, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, and leave Iraq.

Peace.

God is greatest. God is greatest.

[signed]

Saddam Hussein,

President of the Republic of Iraq and Commander in Chief of the Mujahid Armed Forces.

7 July 2006.

[Appended to the letter was a selection of poetry by Saddam Hussein dealing with the homeland, invasion and the struggle for liberation]
Source: albasrah

¶ 5:18 AM

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

A non-Iraqi employee of the I.S.T threatens the Defense counsel and violates rights

In an unprecedented act in the history of Iraq or international courts, an employee in the so-called the defense office of the Iraqi special tribunal (I.S.T) , sent a threat to the defense committee for president Saddam Hussien and his comrades .

In a letter sent to lawyer khalil Dolimi on July 11^th 2006 the president of the defense committee , William Wielly threatened the defense lawyers chosen by their clients that they may be replaced by other lawyers appointed by the court , and that they may be dismissed from the case and lose their licenses to practice law" .

This letter ignores all and every legal, professional and human value, and it violates the basic rules of a fair trial. Besides it breaches the law of this court itself.

First: this consultant whom we don't know his qualifications has appointed himself as a spoke person for the court even though he is merely a foreign employee in the defense office of the court. He violates rule (30) of the rules of procedure of the court with all its paragraphs and provisions. he works for the administration department of the court and so he is not entitled to directly address the counsel of our clients own choosing .

Second : the letter is written in English. This a violation to article (32) of the law of the court itself which provided that Arabic is the official language used in the court.

Third : the function of the so – called defense office is to ensure the rights of the defendants who wish to have legal counsel from that office because they don’t have sufficient means to pay .That office has no right to threaten the defendants that it may impose appointed lawyers against their wills.

Fourth: our client, president Saddam Hussein, has asked the court to inhibit that same person from forcing him self upon the president defense.

Furthermore, the defense committee has submitted a formal request to the court in order to remove this person and to stop his intervention the defense lawyer's work and their witnesses. That request of June 12^th, 2006 was ignored by the court, like most of the legal and just requests of the defense.

Fifth: this letter is a grave violation to all the articles of chapter eight of the Iraqi Law of lawyers no (173) of 1965 which gives the right to take discipline measures against a lawyer exclusively and solely to the council of the Iraqi bar association .This person has no right to raise any warning to any lawyer either an Iraqi or a non Iraqi. His warning is improper to the dignity of lawyers and to the profession of law in any state .

Sixth: this letter is a striking intervention in the function of the judiciary .It contradicts the Iraqi nature and the independence of the court .Wielly is not the only foreign person or party who has the final say in the course of proceedings including a wide range of issues that extend from threatening the defense lawyers who are chosen by the clients to the controlling of the protection of their soul and their lives of families. Such fundamental issues have been left by the court to foreign parties to control them.

To our great sorrow, we find ourselves obligated to remind the Iraqi high criminal court that it is "supposed" to function in the "name of the Iraqi people " and not in the name of Wielly or countless individuals, few of whom are working in open while the majority of them are working behind the scenes . No body-expect those who employed them – knows their legal or professional qualifications or their integrity . A practice which violates the basic principles of a fair trial.

ISNAD

source: albasrah , where you can read the Arabic translation of this article

¶ 1:02 PM

Monday, July 03, 2006

The BRussells Tribunal, 29 June 2006
(To read it's translation in Arabic)

1. On June 21, 2006, attorney Khamis al-Obaidi was killed in Baghdad. He is the third defense counsel for Mr. Saddam Hussain to be killed, joining Mr. Sadoun al-Janabi, killed in October 2005 and Adel al-Zubaidi, killed in November 2005. Attorney Thamir al-Khuzaie was wounded in the November incident.

2. Attorney al-Obaidi was the ninth person connected with the trial of Mr. Hussain to be killed, prompting another attorney in the case, Najeeb al-Naimi (former Qatari minister of justice), to state: "there is no security. All of us have received threats."

3. The murder of yet another defense counsel has prompted many concerned with the overall situation in Iraq to question whether all proceedings should be halted due to the undue risk of the participants' lives and safety. While agreeing that proceeding should be halted on safety grounds, we also have more fundamental legal questions about the detention and trial of Mr. Hussain in light of existing rules of the laws and customs of war (humanitarian law), and the laws established under the international system of human rights. These bodies of law are binding on all judicial actions.

4. In order to sort out all the possible irregularities if not violations of fair trial rules from both humanitarian and human rights law, we must first state that Mr. Hussain is a prisoner of war. This is because he was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Iraq in the war by the United States against Iraq. As a POW, he is entitled to all provisions of Geneva Convention III of 1949, Protocol Additional I to the Geneva Conventions, and all binding customary humanitarian law relating to confinement of POWs. Of particular note in this regard is Article 22 of Geneva Convention III, which provides that POWs may not be held in penitentiaries unless in the interest of the POWs themselves. It appears that Article 22 is being violated in the confinement of Mr. Hussain, and we also question whether there is full application of the rights set out in Articles 25 - 27 regarding other conditions. In this light we urge that the authorities allow full access of the International Committee of the Red Cross or other competent organization to assess the conditions of confinement. It appears that the US has clear physical control over Mr. Hussain.

5. Of key importance in this situation is to determine who may try Mr. Hussain and for what acts. While the invasion of Iraq by the United States forces was illegal, the Geneva Conventions nonetheless apply, and under provisions of the Geneva Convention, the United States, as the Occupying Power, may charge and try Mr. Hussain for acts in contravention of humanitarian law. Whether on Occupying Power could try a POW for human rights violations occurring outside the context of the armed conflict raises serious questions. (That question was only partially raised in the Astiz case: Mr. Astiz was captured in the Malvinas War, but was alleged to have participated in human rights violations in Argentina. Several States wanted to try him for those violations, but he was instead returned to Argentina by the Protecting Power). The United States, for political reasons, did not want to try Mr. Hussain itself because Mr. Hussain had not committed any actionable offences against the United States, either during the US-Iraqi war or at any other time. Further, the United States would not have been able to validly sentence Mr. Hussain unless as a result of a proceeding in the same courts as it uses for its own armed forces (Article 102), provided that a number of other conditions are met. The United States could turn Mr. Hussain to a neutral State (or in Geneva Convention language Protecting Power), but also for political reasons did not choose to do so. In fact, the United States has not authorized any State[s] as Protecting Power[s]. However, as the Astiz case suggests, a Protecting Power itself can neither try a person under its protection in its own courts for criminal acts committed in another State, nor turn a Protected Person over to a third party State. The United States could also try Mr. Hussain in its own civil courts "if its laws permit civil courts jurisdiction over its own armed forces (Article 84). Instead, the United Stated turned Mr. Hussain over to a specially constituted "court" of occupied Iraq, supposedly under the command of a judicial system controlled by the "Iraqi" government. The "Iraqi" government, however, is not an independent State, but one controlled by the Occupying Power. In the situation in Iraq, there is essentially no functioning, independent judiciary, and there had not been any provision in the old judicial system for trying POWs in civilian courts. The Occupying Power destroyed any possibility of Iraqi military tribunals as the venue for trying Mr. Hussain. The Iraqi court is inherently biased and fails to meet minimun standards of impartiality. The situation, then, is one of total judicial abnormality with a lack of legal authority. Accordingly, the trial of Mr. Hussain should be halted until such time as there is a court with proper legal authority and with jurisdiction over the alleged acts at issue.

6. While the court itself is a legal aberration and must be halted on that ground alone, it is still important to point out that in the process as a whole, there have been numerous violations of other minimum requirements for either military or civil courts, as set out in Article 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. So even if there may be some grounds for "legalizing" an illegal tribunal, the proceedings in themselves would require nullification of either imposition of or carrying out any sentence.

7. It is important to note that the crimes that Mr. Hussain is currently charged with did not take place in the context of the current war: in fact they did not take place in the context of any war and thus are not actionable as breaches of the Geneva Conventions or other instruments or principles of humanitarian law. The alleged crimes are criminal law violations, not war crimes. Conditions in Iraq preclude meaningful, impartial investigation into the events, and even if a proper-constituted court were to be established, fair trial rules relating to evidence may be impossible to meet.

8. The trial of Mr. Hussain is taking place in a context of the daily commission of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions by the Occupying Power. Under such conditions alone, the trial should be halted as impossible under the circumstances.

9. The 1945 Nuremberg Charter states clearly: "To initiate a war of aggression ..is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." The UN Charter and its Definition of Aggression (GA Res. 3314) reinforce this rule. Since the invasion under the Nuremberg and UN Charters was utterly illegal, all that followed from it is illegal, from Mr. Bremer's laws to the new constitution to the trial of Mr. Hussain.

10. For the reasons set out above, the current judicial proceedings against Mr. Hussain should be halted. The provisions of Geneva Convention III relating to Protecting Powers and POWs should be implemented regarding Mr. Hussain and all similarly situated persons of the government in place at the time of the invasion of Iraq who are detained in Iraq. All persons involved with the proceedings must be fully protected.

To all those who respect international legality:
Please raise your voice against the constant breaking of international rules governing Mr. Saddam Hussain's trial.
The BRussells Tribunal, in defence of international law, and in solidarity with the defense counsel and staff and with the families of those killed.

29 June 2006.

Source: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/HussainAppeal.htm
لمراسلة المحكمة :
iraq-tribunal@lists.riseup.net

¶ 5:05 AM