Ibn over at Ibn_Alrafidain has a post up today about his thoughts on Saddams regime and justice. He tells a story about the injustice of the dictator’s regime:
“Saddam viewed judges and judicial system as toys which he can play with. In the mid of 1990s an incident happened between a bodyguard of Qusay (one of Saddam’s sons) and another person. The two guys quarreled over a prostitute in a private party. The bodyguard drew a gun to shoot his rival. The other guy jumped on him, managed to snatch the gun and killed the bodyguard.
The case came to trail. Qusay ordered the court to hang the killer. According to the Iraqi law, since the accused had not had an earlier intention of killing the bodyguard and the gun owned and drawn by the victim, the maximum sentence is not death and that was the court rule. Qusay started to become angry. Appeal was made with strict orders from Qusay to hang the accused. The court of appeal couldn’t change the judgement since the law is clear about the case circumstances. Qusay anger multiplied, so the case was finally taken to Supreme Court of Appeal in Iraq with the same strict orders from Qusay to hang the accused.
Head of Supreme Court of Appeal in Iraq relates “After reading the case dossier I became puzzled about what to do. When I had been chosen for the position by Saddam, he told me to be completely bound to law and to enforce law in the judicial system. As a solution, I called the whole board members of the court for a meeting. After discussing the case, we decided that the case to be taken back to the first court which had passed the main judgement with a recommendation to revise it.
The first court approved its main judgement, though the strict orders of Qusay were accompanied with the dossier. And the same scenario repeated in the other two courts”.As a result of not obeying the orders of Qusay, a presidential decree signed by Saddam was issued. The whole judges who had agreed on the lawful sentence were fired. And to humiliate them, the decree ordered to degrade their judicial title to the lowest one. Their pension was calculated according to the lowest degree.
The fired head of Supreme Court of Appeal adds “I was and still in great confusion and puzzlement about what Saddam had told me and what happened later”.
Go and read the rest.
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