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20-10-2005 Scotsman Arab world is split over the trial of Saddam By Gethin Chamberlain Chief News Correspondent THE trial of Saddam Hussein has polarised opinion not only in Iraq, but across the Arab world. Many Iraqis watched with relief yesterday as the former dictator appeared in a Baghdad courtroom to face the first of a series of trials relating to his brutal three-decade rule. But others angrily dismissed the trial as a kangaroo court, declaring they did not recognise the US-backed case against a man who still proudly styles himself "the president of Iraq". Saddam's trial was broadcast with a time delay on major television stations in Iraq. The influential Arab satellite television networks, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, broadcast the trial live from the beginning, with hours of coverage before it opened. Pan-Arab dailies such as al-Hayat splashed the opening day on their front pages. Many Iraqis gathered round their television sets to watch the proceedings, but by no means everyone was enthused. The headline in Saudi Arabia's Arabic language-daily al-Watan told of indifference: "Saddam's Trial: No-one cares," it read. "The curtains have opened, the cast is ready but the audience is busy with other issues... Even if we concede that the majority of Iraqis hate Saddam, they also hate how things have developed." Others were bitterly opposed to the whole process. Saddam's eldest daughter was, perhaps predictably, among that group, describing his trial as a farce. Raghd Saddam Hussein said her father had always been a fearless hero who never bowed down to anyone. "I am very happy because I am the daughter of a heroic man, a lion. We're a family used to bravery and do not fear difficult times." But many of those watching were relishing the sight of the man who ruled Iraq for so long brought low. "I hope he is executed, and that anyone who suffered can take a piece of his flesh," said Salman Zaboun Shanan, a Shiite who was imprisoned during Saddam's rule, as was his wife Sabiha Hassan and several sons. The Shiite Muslim majority and the Kurdish minority - the two communities most oppressed by Saddam's regime - have eagerly awaited the chance to see the man who ruled Iraq with such total power and ruthlessness held to justice. "I'm very happy today. We've prayed for this day for years," said Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi deputy prime minister, who was an anti-Saddam opposition leader in exile for years and now is one of the fiercest proponents of the purge of Baathists from the government. Iraqi exiles in neighbouring Jordan were especially vocal. "Saddam killed my uncle and my cousins," said 23-year-old Mohamed Aziz, an Iraqi Shiite from Nasiriyah, now living in Amman, the Jordanian capital. "All the suicide bombings are the work of Saddam. God willing, he will be executed." In Kuwait, which Saddam's forces occupied for seven months after his 1990 invasion set off the first Gulf war, memories died hard. "What he did to us was bad. I hope before they execute him, they bring him to Kuwait, put him in a cage and drive him around so that we can hit him with shoes [the ultimate Arab insult]," said 48-year-old homemaker Wadha al-Abduljader. Iranians likewise paid close attention, remembering the death and destruction they suffered after Saddam invaded, setting in motion a war that bled both nations for eight years. "We should take part in Saddam's trial as a symbolic and political action to show other countries that we still have a claim for his invasion of Iran," said Yousof Mowlawei, a professor at Tehran University. "There should be an international court to judge Saddam's crimes against Iran." In Israel, against which Saddam fired 39 Scud missiles during the first Gulf war, the trial was viewed with obvious satisfaction and as a look forward to what it could mean for other Arab leaders. "Blood-soaked dictators need to know that in the end, they cannot only be deposed but also brought to trial and may be executed," said Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee. "I'm sure it will provide food for thought in Damascus. ... I'm sure [Syrian president Bashar] Assad is watching in trepidation." Opponents of the trial were equally vocal and there was little sympathy in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, a Sunni Arab bastion, for the residents of the town of Dujail whose murder is the subject of the first trial. "When they tried to assassinate him, the law authorised him to execute those who took part in it," said a 55-year-old shopkeeper who gave his name only as Adel. Dozens of young men in Tikrit, which long basked in Saddam's patronage, demonstrated in favour of their town's famous son. "The trial is unfair," said student Dawud Farham, 18. "They should put on trial those who are tearing apart Iraq and its people." Demonstrators, chanting "Long Live Saddam Hussein" and carrying banners emblazoned with slogans such as "Down with the occupation and the puppet government", milled in the centre of town, closely watched by Iraqi police and US troops. In Jordan, too, there was some support for the former dictator. Mohammed Ali Kadhem, a former Iraqi soldier who crossed the border two years ago looking for work, said: "This trial is illegitimate and futile. Saddam Hussein is not a criminal. He is a hero. I hope he will be acquitted and return to power." And in Palestine, there was support for Saddam. Weal Naser, a 42-year-old Palestinian owner of a Gaza vegetable shop, said Palestinians could never forget Saddam's past support for their cause. "He supported the martyrs' families and he helped many students in Palestine or during their studies in Iraq," he said. Saddam is "paying now the price for being a hero, for saying 'No' to America and to Bush", he added. Elsewhere, Egypt's state-owned press chose to mostly ignore the trial. A columnist in one respected pan-Arab newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat, said the trial had lost much of its meaning, because of the bloody insurgency ravaging Iraq. "It should have been held when Iraqis' memory was full of images of humiliation and that of tens of thousands of the victims and handicapped of the wars," wrote Lebanese columnist Samir Attallah. Instead, he said, the insurgents had erased the horrors of Saddam's regime from people's minds. "Innocent Iraqis used to die in prison and in their homes, now the occupation resistance is killing ... innocents and their children in the streets," he wrote.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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