Two sides of the Saddam coin

Found on BBC News on Friday, 21 October 2005
Browse Politics

The presiding judge, Rizgar Mohammad Amin, must have known beforehand that he was going to have a battle on his hands.

He and the other four judges on the bench had to maintain their control over Saddam Hussein. He, for his part, was determined to try to take over the proceedings.

He was free of the chains and handcuffs which were imposed on him in the past, but two Iraqi guards in bullet-proof jackets gripped him firmly by the arms.

Yet when the judge finally ordered him to sit down, he did so meekly, shambling away from the microphone to his seat a little apart from the other seven defendants.

There was the same switch between defiance and obedience later. When the prosecutor outlined the case against him he interrupted several times, accusing the prosecutor of lying.

Saddam had finally acknowledged the other defendants for the first time, smiling and making jokes about the changes in their appearance since the last time he had seen them, when they were still serving his regime.

When he was brought to the court, he refused to accept it, and insisted on still being the president of Iraq. He was removed by war; not even a civil war, but an attack from the US. The needed force to stop him caused more harm than he did. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been better just to wait until he died of old age. But why think about it at all? This war was about oil, not freedom.