14 Mar Saddam Bounced Out of European Court of Human Rights
14.03.06
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1 Comment
The ECHR has refused to admit a case filed by Saddam Hussein against European countries that participated in the military invasion and deposition of his regime in Iraq. (Full text of the decision here)
The obvious problem with Saddam’s claim is jurisdictional. But his lawyers argued that “he fell within the jurisdiction of all the respondent States because they were the occupying powers in Iraq, because he was under their direct authority and control or because they were responsible for the acts of their agents abroad.”
This was a loser argument, if I ever saw one, and the ECHR wisely threw this argument, and the claimant, out the door.
I can’t agree that this was “a loser argument”, principally because the Court threw the case out as unsubstantiated in evidence, not untenable.
The ECtHR has recognised that effective control of territory can (as it should) impose responsibility on occupying forces for human rights violations. If, as Hussein had argued (but had simply asserted, not sought to prove), states parties to the European Convention are jointly part of the effective government of Iraq – and this is not a question beyond doubt, given both the substantial occupying presence and role and the clear inefficacy of most if not all organs of the Iraqi government – those states are answerable for such matters as the fairness of Hussein’s trial.