“I was forced to take off my clothes, and he raised my legs up and tied up my hands. He continued administering electric shocks and whipping me and telling me to speak”….

No, it’s not the latest Scooter Libby novel. Just more of the barely reported waste of time known as The Saddam Hussein Trial. But by all means, let’s continue with the folly of the Middle East’s Independent Judiciary Action Playset.

Several times, the woman _ hidden behind a light blue curtain _ broke down. “God is great. Oh, my Lord!” she moaned, her voice electronically deepened and distorted.

She strongly suggested she had been raped, but did not say so outright. When Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin asked her about the “assault,” she said: “I was beaten up and tortured by electrical shocks.”

The witness, who was 16 at the time of her arrest, repeated that she had been ordered to undress.

Enemy combatant picked up on a battlefield vs. sixteen year old girl picked up out of her father’s home. What’s the difference? Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

“They made me put my legs up. There were more than one of them, as if I were their banquet, maybe more than five people, all of them officers,” she said.

“Is that what happens to the virtuous woman that Saddam speaks about?” she wept, prompting the judge to advise her to stick to the facts.

She also said al-Sheik fired a gun at the wall to scare her.

Yes, yes. Very good show Ma’am - but let me ask you this, “Were there panties placed on your head?”

“Have you now, or at anytime been placed in a gay pyramid?”

“Did anyone at anytime splash urine on your Koran while the guards took turns riding your carnival of orifices?”

She later quoted a security officer as telling her, “You should thank your God because you are here in the Intelligence Center. If you were in the directorate of security, no woman would remain virgin.” Nevertheless, she also said that many fellow female detainees lost their virginity to security guards.

There you have it. Peer pressure. All of her friends were sleeping with guards so she did too. How convenient.

Your Honor. Move to strike. This woman’s obviously a whore and has no credibility.

Next witness.

“Witness C,” a man, testified that he was taken by security forces along with his parents and two infant sisters. They spent 19 days at the intelligence headquarters and 11 months in Abu Ghraib, where his father died after being beaten on the head, he said. Then they spent three years in the desert.

“At the intelligence headquarters, they put two clips in my ears,” the witness said, adding that he was told that if he lied, he would be given an electric shock. When he answered a question, the shock was administered, he said.

“In prison they used to bring men to the women’s room and ask them to bark like dogs,” he said. “My father died in prison and I was not able to see him.” He added that his father, who was 65 and had heart problems, was kept in a room about 50 yards from him.

[...]

That prompted an outburst from Saddam, who complained of his own conditions in detention. He said the court had time to listen to the witnesses’ complaints “but does anyone ask Saddam Hussein whether he was tortured? Whether he was hit?” (emphasis mine)

Somewhere, the tiniest violin’s bow is being resined.

I understand that we believe the Iraqi people need “closure” to Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror. His capture gave them that. But giving Hussein and Ramsey Clark a microphone to threaten the judge and extend the brutality those people faced for over twenty years by acting like the megalomaniacal asshole he is just isn’t cutting it.

HindRocket is apparently on the same page.

Given how Slobodan Milosevic has gamed the system so that he’ll die before judgment is ever rendered - this current foray with Hussein is yet another example of why you don’t extend traditional criminal trials to toppled dictators. (I’ll forget to mention that Kosovo never attacked the US or had WMDs or killed people on a scale anything close to Hussein).

Let’s leave the Show Trials to the Soviets.

Posted by Smantix @ 1:56 am
No Comments and 1 Trackback | Permalink | Trackback URI

Comments

:: Trackbacks/Pingbacks ::

1. Outbursts, Delays, and Adjournments

   But, am I wrong about Saddam’s trial? Has it turned into a circus that actually diminishes the legitimacy and authority of the court, or is this a temporary setback that can be rebounded from?

   Trackback by A Blog For All — Wednesday, December 7, 2005 12:50 pm | permalink

   
   

:: Comments ::

No comments

Leave a Comment

Sorry, comments are closed at this time.