Barry Lando writes in Le Monde

A BLATANTLY BIASED TRIAL

As George Orwell wrote in '1984', "Those who control the present, control the past." When these trials are over, Saddam Hussein and some of his lieutenants will be hung and George W. Bush will solemnly declare that justice has been done.(pic BBC live from trial 19/10)

However, as seems increasingly likely, Iraq sinks into chaos, Saddam Hussein will end up becoming, in the eyes of many in Iraq and elsewhere, a patriotic hero, a martyr, among so many others to victors' justice.

On December 13, 2003, American troops pulled Saddam Hussein out of the narrow lair in which he was hiding.

In an article written in the heat of the moment for Salon.com, I presumed that many important people around the world, rather than rejoicing to finally see the former Iraqi tyrant captured alive, would have preferred to see him dead.

That would have supplied a clear and clean end to the story. There would have been no need for a trial.

In fact, the trial of the former dictator had all the ingredients to become a deplorable global media circus, in which the world's most eminent leaders, past and present, would find themselves in the position of co-defendants for complicity in certain crimes against humanity committed under Saddam's brutal reign. Such a thing would have been easily defensible for Saddam Hussein's lawyers.

Among those leaders figure, notably, American presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George Bush father and son, Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Jacques Chirac, King Hussein, and Prince Fahd - without even counting the bureaucrats who directed the foreign affairs, defense, and intelligence services of their respective countries.

One could add to these leaders an endless list of American and foreign businessmen, as well as bankers, oil magnates, and arms merchants from the world over who amply profited from business conducted with Saddam's regime, some by closing their eyes on what was cooking, others perfectly well aware of it.

If - sinners by commission and omission - they had not supplied him with weapons, finance, intelligence, and diplomatic support, Saddam would never have been able to commit so many horrors.

I wondered for a long time how the Americans and their Iraqi allies would manage to avoid Saddam's trial being transformed into an explosive chronicle of the cynicism and cupidity that have fashioned the history of modern Iraq.

God knows, Saddam and his trusted lieutenants, such as former Foreign Affairs Minister Tarik Aziz, must have fascinating stories to tell about the clandestine agreements they ran with highly placed political leaders and big companies from the world over.

However, the Americans and their Iraqi allies have discreetly resolved the problem of Saddam's trial. First of all, by deciding to avoid the jurisdiction of an international court or a group of independent jurists.

Instead, they have established their own special Iraqi Tribunal. Then, according to the rules of this tribunal, they stipulated that only citizens and Iraqi residents could be judged there.

Which means, for example, that there can be no question of Saddam's lawyers trying to subpoena George Bush senior to appear to ask him why, in February 1991, he called on Iraqis to rise up against Saddam and then, when they did so, he gave the order to American soldiers stationed nearby to refuse to help the rebels...

To destroy the enormous stock of weapons taken from Iraqi troops instead of giving them to the rebels, and allowed Saddam's helicopters to decimate the insurgents and massacre thousands of Shiites, men, women, and children.

No, this embarrassing series of questions will not be allowed by this Iraqitribunal. American Heads of State are neither citizens nor residents of Iraq.

The same logic would apply to Saddam's gassing of thousands of Kurds in Halabja, in 1988. Following the rules of the Tribunal, there's no way that allows Saddam's lawyers to make known that Iraqi chemical weapons were supplied principally by French, Belgian, and German companies whose engineers and chemists knew exactly what Saddam was preparing.

Nor that the United States had previously supplied Saddam with satellite images that allowed him to attack Iranian troops with chemical weapons; or, furthermore, that for years the United States and its allies blocked international campaigns designed to condemn Saddam for his use of mustard and neuro-toxic gases.

That's the theory. But let's suppose that in reality, with the trial being broadcast live all over the world, Saddam Hussein tries to sidestep the rules and explore the question of American or French complicity.

Will the Iraqi judges be able to prevent him from expressing himself without discrediting the entire trial - that will then appear to be a pure set-up?

With the most experienced Iraqi jurists disqualified because of their links with the former Baathist regime, the professional experience of most of the Iraqis composing this tribunal is extremely limited.

Few of them have ever had to deal with big criminal matters, and never with anything on the scale of Saddam Hussein's serial murders.

Aware of these risks, this tribunal's American sponsors have arranged for the Iraqi jurists to receive special training on how to manage a trial so as to avoid that secondary or "off-topic" questions be raised.

Moreover, the American advisors will certainly be there, just beyond camera range, ready to dispense their advice.

To prevent any eventual maneuver from Saddam Hussein, who could try to create dramas in the court room, the rules that have just been established for this tribunal compel the former Iraqi dictator and his co-defendants to use lawyers.

It's out of the question for them to proceed to a cross examination of the witnesses to make their own defense.

Moreover, this trial will not see any confrontation between the prosecutor representing the government and the lawyers representing Saddam and his co-defendants.

The procedure will be conducted by a magistrate, who will first question all the witnesses himself, before passing them on to the defense and to the defendants' lawyers - whose questions will be much more limited.

Those responsible for this tribunal have also carefully chosen the first crime that will be examined by the trial, starting October 19: it's most likely the one that will gather the most attention.

They've selected a relatively "minor" atrocity, denuded of all mystery: the execution of 143 Shiite men and boys from the village of Jubail following an assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein in 1982.

This case will supply the inexperienced judges and lawyers a simple and virtually unchallengeable apprenticeship: numerous moving eyewitness accounts; no possible equivocation with regard to who ordered the murders (Saddam Hussein having signed the decree himself); a rock solid conviction.

The fact will not be mentioned, of course, that shortly after this carnage, in December 1983, Donald Rumsfeld - perfectly well-informed about the Iraqi regime's methods and the use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops - arrived in Baghdad, sent by Ronald Reagan with the objective of strengthening the relationship between the two countries.

Very shortly thereafter, the United States and Saddam Hussein would practically become de facto allies.

Should the Iraqi authorities not be tempted to finish up after this first trial by condemning Saddam to death and executing him, they will go on to an examination of other crimes. But there again, the choice has not been left to chance.

Saddam's illegal invasion of Iran in 1980, followed by the longest war of the Twentieth Century, which created about a million victims, will be passed over in silence. Perhaps because Iran is still on America's enemies list.

Perhaps also because - after giving Saddam a green light for that invasion - the United States supplied hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons - sometimes to both belligerents at the same time - to keep the conflict going.

Thus television viewers the world over, watching what purports to be an exact reconstitution of Saddam's crimes, will, in fact, attend a rewriting of history.

As George Orwell wrote in 1984, "Those who control the present, control the past." When these trials are over, Saddam Hussein and some of his lieutenants will be hung and George W. Bush will solemnly declare that justice has been done.

Will the operation succeed? The answer depends as much on current events in Iraq as on the trial itself.

If, in spite of all the signs that suggest the contrary, the different groups that are now quarreling succeed in forging a new democratic state, Saddam's trial could be seen by most Iraqis as a legitimate manifestation of justice accomplished.

But if the country sinks into chaos, Saddam Hussein will end up becoming, in the eyes of many in Iraq and elsewhere, a patriotic hero, a martyr among so many others to victors' justice.
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Mission Accomplished