Authorities surprised at Saddam's PoW status

Iraqi authorities expressed surprise and disappointment today at reports that Pentagon lawyers have determined that Saddam Hussein has been a prisoner of war since American forces captured him last month.

Some Iraqis expressed concern that prisoner of war status, which grants Saddam certain legal rights and protection under the Geneva Conventions, could prevent Iraqi courts from trying the ousted dictator for alleged crimes against the Iraqi people.

“I am surprised by this decision,” said Dara Nor al-Din, a former appeals court judge and member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

“We still consider Saddam a criminal and he will be tried on this basis. This new move will be discussed thoroughly in the Governing Council.”

On Friday, a Pentagon spokesman, Major Michael Shavers, said the Defence Department’s top civilian lawyers had determined that Saddam was a prisoner of war because of his status as former commander in chief of Iraq’s military. The lawyers determined that no formal declaration of Saddam’s status was needed, he said.

US officials have said they plan to turn Saddam over to an Iraqi court for trial. The United States says Saddam’s government killed at least 300,000 Iraqis, including thousands of Iraqi Kurds in a poison gas attack in 1988.

But the Geneva Conventions say POWs can be tried only for crimes against humanity by an international tribunal or the occupying power – which in this case is the United States.

Iraq’s justice minister, Hashim Abdul-Rahman, called the Pentagon comments “mere views” and insisted that Iraqis themselves would determine Saddam’s fate.

“It is a political decision, not a legal one,” Abdul-Rahman said. “I do not know why it is was taken. But the only thing I do know is that Iraqi bodies will decide Saddam’s status. We will determine his legal status when the Iraqi authorities take over this issue.”

The United States plans to transfer sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government by July 1, after which Iraqi authorities could press demands for jurisdiction over Saddam.

On the streets of the Iraqi capital, some Iraqis speculated that the Americans were trying to deny Iraq the chance to try Saddam for fear the ousted leader would expose secret contacts between Washington and Baghdad during the years when the United States was trying to cultivate ties with Iraq.

“The are considering him a POW in order to have a legal excuse to keep him with them away from the hands of Iraqis,” taxi driver Imad Abbas said. “I don’t think they will hand him for Iraqis for investigation lest he should reveal previous contacts with them.”

Many Iraqis suspect that the United States secretly used Saddam to promote US interests in the Middle East, especially during the 1980s when the West armed Iraq to help defend itself against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

“Saddam has special importance for the Americans as he gave them the master key of the Middle East,” Jamal al-Bayati, a house painter, said. “He should be a war criminal rather than a prisoner of war.”

Ibrahim al-Basri, a physician, said he believed POW status was part of “a bargain between Saddam and the United States.”

“He handed them Iraq,” al-Basri said. “If the Americans wanted to clone an agent to serve them, they wouldn’t find a better one than Saddam. He brought the Americans to the Gulf, divided the Arabs, destroyed Iraq and its weapons, threatened Syria and Iran.”