Wide Iraqi support for Hussein trial

But the trials are unlikely to drag on in the same way as the war crimes trial for Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic. That international tribunal, run under United Nation's auspices, has bent over backward to give a chance to the defense, and Mr. Milosevic has taken the opportunity to lash out at his critics.

The Iraqi trial, by contrast, will have international technical assistance but is set up as an entirely Iraqi affair. The 12 men's status as prisoners of war and their Geneva Convention protections ended with the sign-over of legal authority. Iraq is free to deal with them according to its own laws.

The trial will be run by a special tribunal led by Salem Chalabi, a former exile and nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, a once-close American ally who has fallen out of favor with the US. The tribunal was set up last December to investigate and prosecute crimes against humanity committed between 1968, when the Baath Party seized power, and 2003. Salem Chalabi told CNN that the trials are unlikely to start before 2005.

Iraqi officials say Hussein probably won't be the first of the 12 to go on trial. Among the others charged will be Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, the former internal-security chief known as "Chemical Ali" for leading the campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s that included the Halabja incident and other uses of nerve gas on civilians, and Tariq Aziz, a former deputy prime minister and close associate of Hussein's since the 1950s.

Prime Minister Allawi and the US know how important this trial is to the Iraqi people, and the role it could play in bolstering popular support for his interim rule. The US is helping to pay for a media effort that will ensure that most of the trial is broadcast around the country. Mr. Hussein's arraignment Thursday will also be broadcast.

At Majid's Barbershop, the men are licking their lips at the prospect of seeing Hussein in the dock.

"I hope they show him in chains" when the charges are read against him, says Methun al-Khalifa, a former conscript who says he emerged from the Iran-Iraq war (waged by Hussein in the 1980s with US support) with a mild limp from a gunshot wound to his leg. After the war, he says his brother Harith was "disappeared" by the regime. "Once we start to see this [trial], we'll really believe [that justice is being done]."

The trials will probably not be for the faint of heart, since the regime showed particular ingenuity when it came to brutality and efforts to terrorize its opponents. A former special forces officer, who asked not to be identified, recalls being asked to guard and transport 16 Shiite political prisoners from the south of the country after their failed uprising against the regime.

In Baghdad, more trusted officers boarded their bus, and blindfolded him to prevent him from knowing where they were going. After about 10 minutes, he and the prisoners were in a large room, and a gas mask was thrust at him to protect him from the fumes of a pool of acid at one end of the room.

Nearly in tears, he says he watched in horror as one by one the men were pushed into the pool and disappeared from sight. "There was just a brief scream and they were gone,'' he says. "Other bus loads got different punishment. Some were buried in sand up to their necks and then run-over with a steamroller."

Back at Majid's, the men show similar ingenuity when imagining Hussein's punishment. Iraqi officials say they expect to soon reinstate the death penalty, but most of the men want something more. "He should be tortured and humiliated, and then killed,'' says Mr. Khalifa.

Another man, forced to serve in the Army for a decade with hardly any pay, says he prefers another idea that's been buzzing around Baghdad. "Death is too merciful. They should put him in a cage in the zoo, so that anyone who wants to can go and spit at him."

Page: 1 | 2