22 Aug Post on the IHT’s Appellate Process
22.08.06
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2 Comments
For those that are interested, my short essay on whether Saddam is likely to be executed before a verdict is reached in the current Anfal trial is now available at The Grotian Moment.
This is really a basic question, and perhaps it’s been written up somewhere, but why was there a decision to try each of Hussein’s crimes separately rather than to group the incidents together into a broader narrative of crimes against the Iraqi people?
Non liquet,
An excellent question, to which there is both a pragmatic and legal answer.
The pragmatic answer is that such a trial would simply be too complex and unwieldy — after all, the Dujail trial alone, which was the least legally and factually complex, took nearly nine months to complete.
The legal answer is that Iraqi criminal law has overly restrictive — relative to most other systems — requirements for joinder of cases. Pursuant to paragraph 132 of the Iraqi Code of Criminal Procedure, different offences can only be brought in a single case:
As you can see, none of the four conditions would allow separate events like the Dujail killings and the Anfal genocide to be linked together.
Hope this helps!