Behind the executioner's mask: U.S. 'justice' and the hanging of Iraqi judge Awad Hamad al-Bandar

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Party for Socialism and Liberation-

...Judge Bandar was forced to wear a Guantanamo style prison jumpsuit when he was put to death on January 16. He was convicted of the "crime" of having been the presiding judge over a two-year-long trial against those accused in the assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein at Dujail in 1982, during the Iran-Iraq war. That was his accused crime, being the judge at the trial. Yet, the Court refused to allow Judge Bandar to access or present the record of the underlying trial. He repeatedly pled, "Give me the records of the trial and I’ll prove that it was fair." He was not allowed to have them, nor was the prosecution required to present them. The U.S. government was acknowledged to possess those records. At the start of invasion of Iraq in 2003 the Pentagon released it infamous "deck of cards" with the name and picture of the top 52 Baathist government officials that it was determined to kill or capture or both. Judge Bandar was not included in this list. He was targeted and killed for one reason. He was deemed by U.S. "legal" authorities as a necessary conduit for the killing of the primary target, Saddam Hussein. The only "evidence" presented against Hussein about the executions from the Dujail assassination attempt was that he signed 148 death warrants after a three-year-long trial and review process. The signing of death warrants, an executive function carried out by George Bush himself 152 times as governor of Texas, was not enough "show" in the show trial as a base for execution. Thus, Judge Bandar was put on trial for the two-year trial that led to the death sentences. He was himself accused of presiding over a show trial.

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International Association of Democratic Lawyers condemns execution of Saddam Hussein

Jitendra Sharma, Party for Socialism and Liberation

The International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) unequivocally condemns the trial, verdict and execution of Saddam Hussein as victor's justice, a travesty of international justice and an affront to the rule of law. 1. The execution of Saddam Hussein is a tragic testament of President Bush’s and the U.S.-led Coalition’s War on the Rule of Law. 2. The IADL re-iterates its view that Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants did not, and could not, receive a fair trial in Iraq under the Occupation. As the IADL statement on Saddam Hussein’s trial and verdict, issued at New Delhi on 27 November 2006 points out, the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT) is an illegitimate judicial institution, established by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Occupying Power may not dissolve the judicial bodies of a country, and replace them with its own judicial bodies...

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