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DEATH PENALTY: Russians Say Spare Saddam’s Life

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Nov 15 2006 (IPS) - Russian politicians and Muslim leaders here have thrown their weight against the death sentence handed down early this month to Saddam Hussein, and suggest that an independent, international tribunal be set up to retry the former Iraqi president.

“We assume that trials of a person from any country, regardless of his position, is an internal issue of the state and should be held without influence from outside. We believe that any decision, especially on such a touchy issue as the trial of former Iraqi leader, should be taken on the clear judicial basis without resorting to the political environment,” says an official statement from the Russian foreign ministry spokesman posted on the ministry’s website.

“The judgment engendered controversial reactions in Iraq and a number of Arab states and fears that there will be even more instability,” the statement says.

“Bearing in mind the complicated situation in Iraq, it is very important to avoid things that may divide Iraqi society or hinder the search for national consent through a broad inter-Iraqi dialogue” with the participation of all sides, Kamynin said.

Kamynin, however, did not mention the United States or any country in particular, and stopped short of even stating that the trial was influenced from outside the former Iraqi dictator’s country.

The Iraqi Supreme Criminal Court sentenced Saddam Hussein on Nov. 5 to death by hanging for crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single town during his rule.

Russian legislators characterised the court’s sentence as overly strict and asserted it was not in line with democratic norms. State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said that the death sentence contradicts the principles of a democratic state and European values.

“There is a clear conflict between the fact that Iraq is called a democratic state, on the one hand, and the court rendering such undemocratic decision on the other,” Gryzlov said.

Mikhail Margelov, the chairman of the Federation Council’s International Affairs Committee, said he believed an attempt to dispose of a valuable witness lay behind the decision to sentence Hussein to death.

“The removal of such a valuable witness after what has happened and what is continuing to happen in Iraq could be a cover up by those who do not want Hussein to tell the whole truth about his time in power and about the various forms of collaboration he had with a host of different countries,” Margelov said, according to reports by the Russian news agency Interfax.

“This verdict raises a mass of questions, first and most serious of which is: Who benefits?” he said.

The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party also believes that the judicial process and the verdict were greatly influenced from outside Iraq.

Concerning the sentence, “I can only give a completely negative assessment,” LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky told IPS, “especially when today the European Union consistently advocates for the abolition of death penalty. The union has accepted the verdict in a positive way, which further reveals absence of a common position on vital and sensitive matters.”

“This will lead only to the aggravation of the political situation in the region. Furthermore, it is not possible to forget that Hussein for many years was the elected president and that Iraq was the colony of Britain and Turkey,” said Zhirinovsky, adding that the republic of Iraq is only 50 years old, with Hussein leading the country most of that time, as a “champion for the release from the colonial domination of the regimes, which led the country to the desperation.”

“You see, the United States urged the execution of Hussein prior to the presidential elections in order to influence their results, when (U.S President George W.) Bush will try to lead into the White House his successor, and plans to do everything to make it possible for his successor to bomb Iran, as (the U.S.) has bombed Iraq repeatedly. The reason behind all this is connected to oil resources, how to obtain access to the Iraqi oil,” he said.

Zhirinovsky, who had strong ties to the Saddam Hussein government, accused Bush of aggravating the international political situation, especially in the Arab world.

The Russian Muslim Spiritual Administration also condemned the court’s ruling: “The illegal death sentence has become a disgraceful act of cruelty, heartlessness and judicial impotence. There is no justification for it, nor can there be any, under Sharia, international or secular law,” the administration said in a letter to the Iraqi leadership and heads of Iraqi Islamic organisations.

Iraq “has been seized by the international coalition without sanction from the United Nations, is under the sway of anarchy and brazen, unscrupulous international terrorism, which provides voluntary or involuntary support for the occupation of the country,” the letter said.

Russia, an observer at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), is willing to help rehabilitate Iraq and to give the Iraqis “all possible humanitarian aid,” the administration said.

Hussein’s only criminal offense was his “inability to organise a proper defence for Iraq” and a policy that led to the country’s “isolation from most of the Arab and Islamic worlds and the entire civilised world.”

Cases of this kind should be placed under the jurisdiction of an ad hoc “Supreme Islamic Tribunal,” set up at the OIC, the letter said.

The Central Asian Islamic Cooperation Organisation (CAICO) has called for the reversal of Hussein’s death sentence. The execution of Iraq’s former leader would seriously upset the political situation in the world, the organisation’s leaders said in a press release.

The former dictator does not arouse much empathy. However, the fact that foreigners are administering justice in a Muslim country is an affront to the people’s national and religious feelings, the press release says.

>From the point of view of Islam, death is not the most ruthless punishment. In this regard, the world community will fail to achieve its goal. The former Iraqi leader must not be executed for the sake of global stability, according to CAICO.

The organisation’s leadership contended that, after invading Iraq in defiance of a UN resolution, U.S. troops had destroyed the image of Western democracy as a promoter of progressive humanistic values. If the West makes a wise and carefully thought-out decision regarding the former Iraqi leader, it will have an opportunity to restart dialogue with the Muslim world and recapture its lost position.