Letters to the Editor | 18 November 2006

Saddam’s ‘parody’ of a trial

From Sir Jonah Walker-Smith

Sir: When I read the title to Alasdair Palmer’s article, ‘Saddam’s trial shouldn’t be fair’ (11 November), I assumed that it was written with tongue in cheek. By the time I reached the penultimate sentence — ‘the trials of genocidal killers are not, and should never be, fair’ — I realised, to my surprise, that he was in earnest.

Doubtless Saddam Hussein is as guilty as sin of the crime with which he has been charged and convicted. So was Milosevic. So was Goering. But Milosevic and Goering received fair trials. Saddam did not.

Alasdair Palmer understates the case when he writes that Saddam’s trial has ‘certainly not been a paradigm of fairness’. The fact that the Iraqi government removed one of the judges mid-trial because they perceived him to be ‘biased’ in favour of Saddam is about as blatant a negation of fairness as one can imagine.

Mr Palmer appears to be saying that this really does not matter. With respect, it matters a great deal. A show trial is no trial. A fixed trial is a jinxed trial. If the rule of law — rather than anarchy or totalitarianism — is to prevail, then a fair trial in front of an impartial tribunal is a prerequisite, however heinous the alleged crime and however apparently overwhelming the evidence. Anything less demeans the ‘victors’.

Mr Palmer suggests that an international tribunal would not have been any better. He criticises recent international tribunals for their slowness (fair point) and criticises the Nuremberg trials because, while the tribunal included Soviet judges, ‘the Soviet Union was guilty of crimes as appalling as those of many of the Nazis standing trial’ (again a fair point). But these are relatively minor — and at Nuremberg they were unavoidable — flaws compared with the parody of a trial in Baghdad which has served only to compound the mess which the American and British invasion of Iraq has brought about.

Jonah Walker-Smith
London W2

Different conclusions

From Sebastian Calvo

Sir: Reading Christopher Caldwell’s analysis of the recent American elections (‘We have lost the war’, 11 November) makes me wonder what exactly remains of The Spectator’s old conservative voice.