December 6, 2006
As War Ravages Baghdad, City’s Ambulance Workers Must Pick Up the Pieces

By MICHAEL LUO
BAGHDAD — Each time emergency workers return to the Mansour district ambulance station after a run, they jot notes in a dog-eared logbook that doubles as a grim diary of life here in the capital.

Sept. 10, for example: bombing with two dead.

Or Sept. 29: woman shot in the abdomen.

Oct. 10: man with shrapnel wounds.

Ambulance workers have among the clearest views of Baghdad’s descent into chaos. As the city has disintegrated around them, they have been left to pick up the pieces. They are often overwhelmed, and have increasingly become targets themselves.

“These three years have been equal to 16 years as a paramedic,” said Ali Jasim, 38, before he set off on a convoy carrying medicine and other supplies to Balad, a town north of the capital that was the site of horrific sectarian bloodletting.

Before the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003, so-called hot calls, for bombings or shootings, were virtually nonexistent for Baghdad’s emergency workers. Now most of Baghdad’s ambulance calls are hot. A relatively calm 24-hour shift might mean having to wash the blood from their clothes only once, the workers say.

In this war-ravaged city of five million people, only about 90 ambulances and crews are typically available on any given day for emergency calls, said Dr. Hashim Jabbar Muhammad, chief of the Health Ministry’s emergency directorate. He said international standards recommended several times that number for a city this size.

The city’s emergency dispatch system, the Iraqi equivalent of 911, amounts to a dingy room with 10 phone lines; on a recent visit, three of them were broken. Calls come in at a rate of about one every 10 minutes, although residents often complain that the lines are busy.

Each call requires a cumbersome process of calling back to make sure the call is legitimate.

The ambulance corps here and elsewhere in Iraq feel each spike in violence. When sectarian assassinations surged after the attack on a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, in February, the Baghdad ambulance drivers who pick up dead bodies were swamped.

The capital’s maddening traffic, and the fact that most residents ignore sirens, compound the challenges. Ambulance crews are also treated with suspicion by American troops because militants have been known to use ambulances to transport weapons or bombs. The Americans frequently pull over ambulances in the middle of runs to search them.

Emergency workers earn salaries that are often barely enough to live on, as little as $80 a month for new paramedics. Drivers are also held responsible for any damage they incur on their vehicles.

“I wish I could quit,” said Muhammad Nerous, 26, who has been a paramedic for six years and works at a station in the Bab Sharji neighborhood. “Every day when I come to work, I pray there will be no explosions because I am fed up with these scenes.”

As they rush to bombings now, a secondary blast is often aimed at them. Eleven emergency workers were killed in 2006. Previously, six others had been killed since early 2004, when the department started keeping track.

More than 10 percent of Baghdad’s ambulance drivers have resigned in the last three months alone as violence has escalated, said Dr. Muhammad of the Health Ministry.

On a typical call last month, a crew from the center in Mansour, a troubled western Baghdad neighborhood, transported a woman who had just gone into labor to the hospital. But after dropping her off, a firefight broke out nearby, and the crew was stuck in the cross-fire.

Upon their return, the workers scrawled a new notation in the logbook: “We could have been killed for this assignment. But God’s protection was available.”

It was apparently unavailable several months ago when gunmen killed an ambulance driver from Mansour en route to the dangerous southern neighborhood of Dora. As the ambulance was stopped in traffic, two men appeared and sprayed the vehicle with bullets. The driver, Akram Muhammad Sahih, 34, a married father of two, was killed.

“I pretended I was dead,” said Ali Jabbar Hatin, 34, who was sitting next to Mr. Sahih in the ambulance. He escaped injury but the other paramedic in the vehicle was wounded.

Arkan Ali Hussein, 40, a veteran paramedic who works out of the Mansour center, has an unusual system for keeping in touch with his worried wife throughout his 24-hour shift. She calls his cellphone and hangs up, avoiding a charge. When he calls back and then hangs up, she knows he is alive, he said. The pair exchange missed calls at least a dozen times a day.

But he is reluctant to share with her the horror he sees. Two months ago, a man wearing a suicide belt detonated himself at an army recruiting center in western Baghdad. Mr. Hussein was among the first to arrive.

“There were pieces of flesh everywhere,” he said. “People were yelling and screaming.”

The first man he treated was badly burned, riddled with shrapnel. He shoved a tube into the man’s mouth to establish an airway, then rushed him to the hospital.

When he returned, he spotted a severed leg lying on the ground but could not find the body it belonged to, so he left it, moving on to another victim. The gruesome injuries that he sees nowadays, he said, are much worse than anything he witnessed as a medic in the military during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

“Back then, there was a bullet in the body or a blast from a mine.” he said, “Now we’re finding flesh everywhere, heads, legs and hands.”

Most of the paramedics have only minimal training. As a result, Dr. Muhammad said, their main strategy, rather than treating patients in the field, is to “scoop and run.”

Often, however, there is little they can do. Bilal Mehdi, 26; his brother, Hilmi, 23; and their father, Mehdi Hussain Lazim, 54, are part of a small contingent of emergency workers who only pick up the dead.

Earlier this year, they helped deliver 800 bodies to the morgue in one month from a single sewage treatment station in the mixed eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Rustamiya. Bilal Mehdi said he took 300 bodies himself. Militia members had been dumping bodies into the sewers nearby, and they would wind up at the station. Mr. Mehdi had to clamber down by rope to retrieve the putrid remains.

More recently, he said, he delivered a dozen bodies stacked in his ambulance in one trip from Mahmudiya, south of the capital; some of them decapitated, some without legs. He drove back with his head out the window, because the smell was so overpowering.

As the body count in Baghdad continues to mount, Mr. Mehdi says he wishes he could leave his job. But without any other job prospects, he is stuck for now. He knows it is only a matter of time until his next call.

Wisam A. Habeeb contributed reporting.

Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves

Download the report in PDF format
Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January, 2004, the number of confirmed sites climbed to fifty-three. Some graves hold a few dozen bodies—their arms lashed together and the bullet holes in the backs of skulls testimony to their execution. Other graves go on for hundreds of meters, densely packed with thousands of bodies.

"We've already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair on November 20 in London. The United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all estimate that Saddam Hussein's regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. "Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been 'disappeared' by the Iraqi government over the past two decades," said the group in a statement in May. "Many of these 'disappeared' are those whose remains are now being unearthed in mass graves all over Iraq."

If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

Please note: This report contains some graphic images and descriptions, including first-hand accounts from three Iraqis who survived the mass murders.

COMMENTS ON THE INDICTMENT OF SADDAM HUSSEIN
MID-TRIAL

Issam Michael Saliba*

On Monday, May 15, 2006, seven months into the trial of Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants before the criminal chamber of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal, the presiding judge of the panel of five judges issued what has been labeled by media observers as formal charges or indictments. Mainstream media outlets have indicated that the Iraqi legal system, unlike the system in the United States, provides for formal charges against the accused to be filed after the prosecution presents its evidence, not at the outset of the trial.

Such perceptions raise interesting questions that need to be discussed. First, does the Iraqi law allow for a trial to begin without an indictment informing the defendant of the crimes with which he is charged? Second, what role does the trial court play with respect to such an indictment under Iraqi law?

The answer to the first question is in the negative. Iraqi law, like other criminal legal systems, requires that the accused be informed of the charges brought against him by the investigative judge who decides whether the accused should be tried. As to the second question, the trial court decides at the conclusion of the prosecution's case whether the evidence supports an indictment necessitating the resumption of trial.

1. Iraqi Law Requires an Indictment Prior to the Beginning of Trial
In accordance with international law, the right of the accused to be informed promptly of any charges against him is guaranteed. Article 9, paragraph 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Iraq on January 25, 1971, stipulates that:

anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.[1]

This right is also guaranteed under Iraqi law. Article 19, paragraph 4.1 of Law Number 10 of 2005, which established the tribunal before which Saddam Hussein and his co-defendant are being tried, provides that whenever a defendant is charged pursuant to that law he shall be entitled to a fair trial with certain minimum guarantees, including:

to be informed promptly and in detail of the content, nature, and the reasons for the charges directed against him.[2]

This means, at least, that the defendant should be formally apprised of the charges at the beginning of the trial. In fact the trial cannot start and the court cannot assert jurisdiction over the case before a formal indictment is issued against the accused by an investigative judge. Under Iraqi law, it is the investigative judge, not the prosecutor, who conducts pre-trial investigation, gathers the evidence including reception of testimony of witnesses, and decides whether the accused should be referred to trial.

Article 18 of Law Number 10 describes the process of referring the case to trial before the criminal chamber of the special tribunal. [3] If the investigative judge determines that there is enough evidence to support a finding that the accused has committed a crime within the jurisdiction of the special tribunal, he issues an indictment called "Qarar ihalat" (referral decision) in which he summarizes the facts and the crime attributed to the accused, and the specific section of the law under which the accused shall be held responsible.

Pursuant to paragraph 1 of article 20 of Law Number 10, the accused against whom an indictment has been issued immediately shall be informed of the charges and be transferred to the custody of the court.[4] Paragraph 3 of the same article requires the court not only to read the referral decision to the defendant but also to satisfy itself that the defendant understands fully the charge or charges directed against him, and, then to ask him to enter a guilty or non-guilty plea.[5]

It is not clear whether the trial court in the present case against Saddam Hussein has released the original indictment issued by the investigative judge.

2. Role of the Court Relating to Indictment
Iraqi law, unlike criminal procedural rules in other civil law countries, has adopted a special feature under which the presiding judge of the criminal court with jurisdiction over felonies and certain other crimes has to certify the indictment half way through trial.

The trial starts by asking the defendant for his name, his father and grandfather's names, his age, his title, his occupation and his place of residence. Then it will proceed by reading the referral or indictment decision of the investigative judge, receiving the testimony of the complainant, if any, as well as the testimony of each of the prosecution witnesses separately, and next reading the investigative reports and any other relevant documents. Then, according to Article 167 of the Criminal Procedures Code, the court receives the statement of the defendant and the requests of the complainant and the prosecutor.[6]

At this stage of the trial the court has, in accordance with article 181 of the Criminal Procedures Code,[7] either to:

dismiss the case if the evidence is insufficient to support a conviction; or

adopt the indictment if the evidence as presented may support a conviction of the defendant for a crime that is within the jurisdiction of the court. If the facts as presented constitute a crime different from the one prescribed in the original indictment, the court may modify the indictment within certain limitations.
In the second situation, the court shall read to the defendant the indictment as adopted by the court, explain it to him and ask him if he admits committing the crime or not. The trial shall then resume and proceed to its final conclusion.

3. Concluding Remarks
As we indicated, it is not clear whether the trial court has ever released the original indictment of Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants in the present al-Dujail prosecution (it would be of interest to those who are following the trial to have access to the original indictment issued by the investigative judge and to compare it with the May 15, 2006, decision of the trial court). Nor is it clear at this point whether the court adopted the indictment as presented or has made any substantive modifications to it.

________________________________________________________________________
* Issam Saliba is a member of the Beirut Bar and serves at the Law Library of Congress as Foreign Law Specialist for the Middle East and North African Arab States.

Notes:

1. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 9, para. 4, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR, 3d. Sess., Supp. No. 16, U.N. Doc. A/6316, 999 U.N.T.S. 171 (Mar. 23, 1976).

2. The Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal Law Number 10 of 2005, art. 19, para. 4.1, published in the Iraqi official gazette (Alwaqai Aliraqiya), issue number 4006, October 18, 2005.

3. Id. art. 18.

4. Id. art. 20, para. 1.

5. Id. art. 20, para. 3.

6. Iraqi Criminal Procedure Code Law Number 23 of 1971, art. 167, published in the Iraqi official gazette (Alwaqai Aliraqiya) issue number 2004 dated May 31, 1971.

7. Id. art. 181.

November 7, 2006
Saddam Hussein Adjudged Serial Mass Murder
by James A. Phillips
WebMemo #1247
An Iraqi tribunal has convicted former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein of mass murder and sentenced him to death. Bringing Saddam and his henchmen to justice is a welcome milestone on Iraq’s grueling path from dictatorship to democracy. Without resolving Saddam’s fate, national reconciliation would be a difficult proposition for Iraq’s Shia Arabs and Kurds, long persecuted by Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime.

Saddam’s trial also is an important step towards establishing the rule of law in Iraq. And it is a historic event for the broader Middle East. As one Iraqi blogger noted, “For the first time in our region tyrants are being punished for their crimes through a court of law.”[1]

Saddam’s trial stands out as an exemplary model of fairness compared to the arbitrary “justice” meted out by his own regime and other governments in the Middle East.

Saddam’s trial was not an example of “victor’s justice” imposed by foreign powers but a judicial proceeding designed and carried out by Iraqis, who were the chief victims of his brutal rule. Nor was it a kangaroo court or show trial. The Iraqi judicial authorities labored to give the toppled tyrant a fair hearing. It was Saddam who sought to put on a show, spewing vitriolic rhetoric to score points with his diehard followers and help ignite a wider insurgency.

Saddam was found guilty of ordering the 1982 murders of 148 Iraqis from the predominantly Shiite village of Dujail after a failed assassination attempt against him. He will be hanged, along with his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim, then the leader of Iraq’s feared Muhkabarat intelligence agency, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujail villagers. A local Baath Party officer was acquitted for lack of evidence, and four others received prison sentences in the highly publicized trial.

An Iraqi appeals panel has unlimited time to review the case. But if the verdicts are upheld and confirmed by Iraq’s presidential council, the convicted men must be executed within thirty days. Meanwhile, Saddam is standing trial in another case related to the 1988 “al-Anfal” (the spoils) campaign against Iraqi Kurds, who opposed his brutal regime. Approximately 4,000 villages were destroyed and 180,000 Kurds liquidated in a series of mass murders designed to break down all resistance to his dictatorship.

Saddam did not calmly accept his verdict. He screamed at the presiding judge, “Go to hell, you and the court!” and cynically chanted, “Allahu Akbar,” (God is great) to pander to radical Muslims viewing the televised proceedings. Yet this serial mass murderer killed over half a million of his own countrymen (by conservative estimates) during his reign of terror and several hundred thousand more Iranians and Kuwaitis while invading his neighbors. This makes him responsible for the deaths of more Muslims than any single leader since the Mongol hordes invaded the Middle East in the 13th century.

Saddam’s legacy persists in Iraq’s bloody insurgency, which is dominated by a loose alliance of his Baathist followers, Sunni Arab tribes, and Islamic radicals. Bringing Saddam to justice was an important accomplishment of the American intervention in Iraq. But to safeguard Iraq’s future, the United States must help Iraq’s elected government to defeat the insurgents that continue to murder innocent Iraqis and American troops in Saddam’s name.

James Phillips is Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.

[1]

Dec 6, 4:18 PM EST

Carter Book Criticized

ATLANTA (AP) -- A longtime aide to Jimmy Carter has resigned from the Carter Center think tank, calling the former president's new book on Israel and the Arabs one-sided and filled with errors.

Kenneth Stein, the Carter Center's first executive director and founder of its Middle East program, sent a letter that bluntly criticized the book to Carter and others.

Stein wrote that the book, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid," was replete with factual errors, material copied from other sources and "simply invented segments," according to an excerpt of the letter published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Deanna Congileo, Carter's spokeswoman, said the former president stands by the book.

Stein, who is also director of the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel at Emory University, did not immediately return a call Wednesday.

Carter issued a brief statement saying that Stein had not been actively involved with the center for more than 12 years and was not involved with the new book. Carter did not directly address Stein's allegations.

It is not the first time Carter and Stein have disagreed over Middle East policy, said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Tulane University and the author of the 1988 Carter biography, "The Unfinished Presidency."

"They've never been on the same page in the Middle East. They've been in an almost constant state of disagreement," Brinkley said. Stein "doesn't trust the Palestinians as much as Carter."

Brinkley said he has read Carter's new book but would not address Stein's accusations.