War crimes tribunal sought against Iraqi torturers

By Ewen MacAskill

LONDON: An organization set up to hunt down the Iraqi leadership for alleged human rights abuses claimed on Wednesday it was poised to indict the first member of the regime.

The British-based organization Indict, which was awarded US$2 million in funding by U.S. Congress, said it had accumulated enough evidence to make a case stick against an Iraqi accused of torture.

Fearful of the Iraqi intelligence service, Indict operates from a secret location in London and carefully guards the identity of its staff.

The Labor MP Ann Clwyd, who is president of the organization and has long campaigned on behalf of the Iraqi Kurds and other victims of the regime, said on Wednesday: "We are excited at the quality of evidence we are getting which we hope will enable us to indict."

To prevent a recurrence of an episode last August in which a senior member of the Iraqi government, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, fled from Vienna 24 hours before legal action was initiated, secrecy is paramount and even Clwyd does not know the identity of the Iraqi being targeted or in which country the indictment will take place. But she said the indictment would be "soon, within the next few weeks or months".

Staff at Indict's office were more secretive, uneasy that Clwyd had gone too far.

Indict, which was set up in 1996, aims to mount an operation similar to that which led to the arrest of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Britain but hopes to secure a successful prosecution.

On a wider front, Indict is lobbying, alongside the United States, for the UN security council to set up a war crimes tribunal for Iraq similar to the ones for Rwanda and the Balkans.

Clwyd said: "We want to send a signal to the Iraqi government that there are no safe hiding places anywhere in the world for those charged with the horrendous crimes of Saddam Hussein and those round him." She said she found it extraordinary, given the scale of the accusations against them, that members of the regime could travel freely round the world.

Although the U.S. state department agreed to provide $2 million two years ago, the first tranche of that money -- $600,385 -- only came through last July. Since that time, Indict's eight-strong team has gathered evidence from around the world and made clandestine trips to Iraq.

Indict insisted it had not been ready for al-Douri as it had only received the funding from the U.S. the previous month and had not accumulated the evidence necessary to make a convincing case.

The top 12 on Indict's wanted list are: President Saddam Hussein; two former heads of the intelligence service, Barzan al- Tikriti and Sab'awi Ibrahim al-Hassan; Saddam's two sons, Uday and Qusay; Ali Hassan al-Majid, the former Iraqi commander in Iraqi Kurdistan and first governor of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait; Mohammed al-Zubaydi, who took part in the coup that brought Saddam to power; Aziz Salih al-Noman, Saddam's former special adviser; Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister; al-Douri, the former interior minister; Watban al-Tikriti, a former interior minister; and Ta Ha Yassin Ramadan, the vice-president.

The accusations range from actions against the Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s to those against the Marsh Arabs in the 1990s. The organization said indictment was possible under various international laws, such as the genocide, Geneva and torture conventions.

Indict, whose board includes the former U.S. ambassador Peter Galbraith and the former British ambassador Sir John Morgan as well as leaders of the Iraqi opposition, has had a short but turbulent history.

It has had a torrid time in the last year trying to establish credibility: questions have been raised about why the United States should fund an organization headed by a leftwing Labor backbencher and there have been rows over money.

Legal action is being taken by Clwyd over articles in Punch and Private Eye.

U.S. state department officials visited the office on Wednesday to check on progress.

Clwyd said of the internal rows: "Of course, in any multicultural organization there are going to be different norms of behavior and it is sometimes difficult to balance people's expectations and desire to indict."

But she said the arrival last year of the money from the U.S. and the employment of Tony Cunningham, a former Labor Euro MP, as chief of staff -- the only member of staff prepared to be named publicly -- had helped create a tightly run organization.

In addition to the $600,385 from the United States, Indict has received $600,000 from an anonymous backer, whom Clwyd is prepared to disclose privately but not publicly.

Indict claimed the necessary majority for the establishment of a war crimes tribunal existed on the UN security council but the danger was of one of the permanent members exercising its veto. As part of its lobbying campaign, a conference has been organized in Paris next Friday.

-- Guardian News Service