Rights Groups Concerned Over Saddam Trial
(TIME)

Amnesty International spent years campaigning on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s victims; now the international human rights group wants to make sure the former dictator gets a fair trial. Amnesty is sending three observers to Saddam’s trial, which starts Wednesday in Baghdad. Their mission? “To assess the trial’s fairness,” says Beth Ann Toupin, an Iraq specialist for the human rights group. “And to make clear we are committed to insuring that victims of human right abuses gain access to justice.”

The Iraqi Special Tribunal before which Saddam is to appear will, on Wednesday, begin hearing only one of what could be many cases brought against Saddam. It concerns the torture and murder of 143 people in the town of Dujail in 1982 after some local men attempted to assassinate Saddam. If the former dictator and his seven co-defendants are convicted, Iraqi law calls for them to be executed within 30 days of their last appeal.

Amnesty International, which objects to capital punishment in all cases, contends that a rush to judgment and early executions will cut short the investigations of a long list of atrocities, including the massacres of 3,000 Kurds 1983 and the disappearance of a further 182,000 during the 1988 Anfal campaign, as well as the massacre of tens of thousands of Shiites during a 1991 uprising in southern Iraq and the persecution of the Marsh Arabs throughout the 1990s.

On Monday, Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shiite whose brother and other male relatives died at the regime’s hands, called for a quick trial and, according to the Associated Press, told reporters, “The Saddam trial is not a research project.” ** Dont worry a short drop and a strong rope and it will all be over.

** Ok spot the double standard here. When Israel builds a barrier to keep out islamofascist scum intent on killing their citizens the looney left howl from the rooftops about how its illegal, immoral and all the rest, yet when Egypt builts a fence to keep out islamonazi scum from blowing up tourists the looney left have nothing to say?...

Cairo - Egypt started building a wire fence around Sharm el-Sheikh's tourist spots in a bid to prevent attackers from crossing into the Red Sea resort that was hit by deadly bombings in July, a security official said on Monday.

"The fence aims to block cars from entering tourist areas except from four designated points and thus prevent possible terror attacks," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The fence would span 20km, stand one-and-a-half metres high, and be patrolled by security forces, the official said.

He said work started on Saturday, but did not say when it would end.

Once the fence is complete, access to the city will be restricted to police-monitored entry points, equipped with state-of-the-art explosive detection equipment, he said. ** Not a word has been heard on this from UN leader Koffing Anus.

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