Next: Trying Iraqi leaders for war crimes

Many of the captured officials may qualify as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions since they, like Hussein, were also members of the armed forces. But being initially classified that way won't protect them from prosecution for war crimes later.

High-ranking military officials who didn't order atrocities or even know they occurred cansometimes be held responsible.

After World War II, one Japanese general was ordered executed by a US military tribunal that found he should have known and stopped his troops from committing illegal acts. "It should cause [the Iraqi officials] to be gravely concerned," says Mr. Kunich.

Iraqis prosecuted by the American military can appeal to US military and civilian courts - including the Supreme Court - but will have no recourse to any international legal body, says Eugene Fidell of the National Institute of Military Justice.

Still, for those captured so far, prosecution may be less important to the US than the information they may provide about other wanted officials and Iraq's weapons programs.

For now, most of the roughly 6,800 low-level prisoners are being held at a facility near Umm Qasr in southern Iraq. US military officials have begun to hold hearings, as required by the Geneva Conventions, to determine their legal status.

The Defense Department says coalition forces have already released 900 prisoners determined to be noncombatants.

But others could be classified as unlawful combatants, like many of the prisoners of the Afghan conflict now detained at the US Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They lack the protections given to national soldiers and could be prosecuted for illegally killing Americans on the battlefield. The trickiest fighters to categorize will be fedayeen militiamen, who were not part of the regular Iraqi Army.

The US must vie with other players interested in prosecuting Iraqi soldiers and government officials, including the Iraqi people themselves, as well as Iranians, Kurds, and Kuwaitis. Kurds, for example, likely want custody of Hussein's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, the former director of intelligence and the Iraqi General Security Directorate, who is suspected of ordering the execution of several thousand Kurdish men.

Potential violations against the Iraqi people may include executing deserters, using civilians as human shields, placing military weaponry in civilian structures such as hospitals or mosques, and coercing Iraqi civilians to fight at gunpoint or by threatening their relatives.

Complicating any prosecution, say legal experts, is the fact that some may argue the US tacitly supported Hussein's regime during much of his rule, authorizing the 1980s sale of substances that can be used in chemical weapons.

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