Saddam Hussein condemned to hang

[Martino]

After a year long show trial, Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death for ordering the killing of 148 people, 24 years ago.


Death penalty for Saddam Hussein

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6117910.stm

Saddam Hussein has been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging.

The former Iraqi president was convicted by a Baghdad court for his role in the killing of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail in 1982.

His half brother Barzan al-Tikriti was also sentenced to death, as was Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar

Former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan got life in jail and three others received 15 year prison terms.

Another co-defendant, Baath party official Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted.

When called to court, Saddam Hussein, dressed in his usual dark suit and white shirt and carrying a Koran, walked to his customary seat and sat down.

Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman ordered Saddam Hussein to stand while he read out the verdict, but the former president defiantly refused to do so and had to be moved from his seat by court attendants.

As the judge began reading the death sentence Saddam Hussein shouted out "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest) and "Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!"

The former leader looked shocked and furious as the sentence was passed, and continued to shout, denouncing the court, the judge and the US-led occupation force in Iraq.

But the BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson said that after his tirade, which was clearly deliberate, as he was led away from the courtroom, Saddam Hussein seemed to have a small smile of triumph on his face.

"It was as if he was thinking 'I've come here and done what I intended to do'," our correspondent said.

Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman quickly called the defendants one by one
Shortly after the verdict was announced celebratory gunfire could be heard across Baghdad.

In the Shia district of Sadr City there was jubilation on the streets, with people driving around in cars, beeping their horns. There were also jubilant scenes in the holy city of Najaf.

The Baghdad celebrations were in defiance of a 12-hour daytime curfew banning all vehicle and pedestrian traffic which was placed on the whole city of six million people amid fears of violence from Saddam Hussein's Sunni Arab supporters.

The government cancelled all army leave and the city's civilian airport was closed.

Immediately after the sentencing violence reportedly broke out in the mainly Sunni Azamiya district of Baghdad, with machine guns and mortars being fired.

Three nearby provinces, including Salahuddin, which contains Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, are also under curfew.

Thousands of people also defied the curfew in Tikrit, but there it was to voice support for Saddam Hussein and to denounce the verdict.

Sunnis in Tikrit marched through the city, chanting "We will avenge you Saddam."

Almost three years since Saddam Hussein was captured, soaring sectarian violence has brought Iraq to the brink of civil war.

Few Iraqis think the trial verdict will ease conflict, the BBC's Andrew North in Baghdad says.

Even those Iraqis who want to see their former leader dead do not believe his execution would make things any better, our correspondent says.

Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants will be given the right to appeal, but that is expected to last a few weeks and to end in failure for the defendants.

Many critics have dismissed the trial as a form of victors' justice, given the close attention the US has paid to it.

Before the session began former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was ejected from the courtroom after handing the judge a note in which he called the trial a "travesty".

Saddam Hussein's defence team have also accused the government of interfering in the proceedings - a complaint backed by US group Human Rights Watch.

And the former leader's lawyers have attacked the timing of the planned verdict, which comes days before the US votes in mid-term elections.

US President George W Bush's Republican Party is at risk of losing control of Congress in part because of voter dissatisfaction over its handling of the Iraq conflict.

[Martino]

And about that man the Americans found hiding in a hole ...

Saddam: Showman without a script

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6116884.stm

From the moment, a year ago, when Saddam Hussein's chains were taken off and he sat down in the dock for the first time, he has dominated the court.

Saddam Hussein frequently quoted from the Koran in court
At first he was still regarded with contempt by many of his natural supporters in Iraq and elsewhere.

This was the man who had urged them to shed their life's blood in his defence, and had then meekly surrendered to the Americans.

Slowly, though, his self-possession grew. He looked good in the dock, in clothes that were made especially for him by his old tailor, and he learned how to make his points successfully and well, with an economy of effort.

Weak prosecution

He was helped by the fact that in both his first trial, for the killings of Shia Muslims at Dujail, and in the second one, for the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, the prosecution seemed weak and ill at ease.

The evidence was often poorly assembled, and the arguments ineffectual.

Both the defence and prosecution lawyers had grown up in a legal system which the former Iraqi president himself had controlled.

Under him, justice was often the last consideration.

Whether from religious conviction or calculation, Saddam Hussein took to bringing a finely-bound copy of the Koran into court, and would occasionally quote from it.

He would sometimes shout out verses from it in order to rebuke his judges or accusers.

Other tactics were less effective.

He announced more than once that he was going on hunger strike, but we would rarely hear any more about it.

In the early stages of the Dujail trial, he refused to acknowledge the right of the court to judge him, then meekly pleaded "not guilty" when the question was put to him.

It was only later, as his self-confidence grew, that he would shout out that he was the rightful president of Iraq, that the judges and prosecution should treat him with greater respect, that the invasion which overthrew him had been illegal under international law.

Sniggers

Yet he never seemed to have a coherent defence strategy.

If he had persisted in attacking the questionable legal basis of the US-led invasion he would probably have had much more impact.

But there has always been a rambling, inconsequential element to his speeches, as though the experience of being overthrown had somehow affected his intellect.

In the middle of the Dujail trial, he made a dignified speech about the way his captors were treating him, only to lapse into bathos as his complaints became more and more trivial.

It would no doubt have been more humane if the Americans had allowed him to lock his lavatory door, but it just raised sniggers in court when he complained about it.

His two trials have fallen well short of the standard they should have aimed at.

But Saddam Hussein himself has never managed the kind of aloof dignity that might have won over the people in Iraq whom he once terrorised.

[CBC guy]

What goes around comes around eh.... While I don't agree with the war in Iraq, you have to admit Saddam WAS indeed a pretty nasty dictator.

[LaiSteve66]

Saddam got what he deserved.

[haplesshobo]

I don't understand the point of this thread, what Martino's objection is to about Saddam being sentenced to die? Even if you agree or disagree with the war, Saddam was a evil tyrant who has blood on his hands.

[TB4000]

My only concern is that they're basically killing him sans an international trial, which is giving them the right to kill any of their own without it. This may be an isolated incident, but it's not the democracy they claim they have over there now. And you just know people are going to give Bush credit for this somehow.

[snailpoo]

My only concern is that they're basically killing him sans an international trial, which is giving them the right to kill any of their own without it. This may be an isolated incident, but it's not the democracy they claim they have over there now.

Erm?

Is there any nation that surrenders its sovereign powers to try and punish its own criminals for crimes committed within their territory?

International trials, like the ones before the Hague, usually require the crimes to be committed across borders, crimes like war crimes.

In this trial, Saddam isn't being tried for the crimes he's committed outside of Iraq --he's being tried for crimes committed against Iraqis.



And you just know people are going to give Bush credit for this somehow.


Bush rightly gets credit for this. But for Bush's decision to invade Iraq, Saddam wouldn't have been brought to trial. It's that simple. If Bush gets the blame for everything else that has gone wrong with Iraq, then he gets the credit for bringing Saddam to trial.

You can't bifrucate good from bad solely to give blame and not credit.

[TB4000]

A mockery of a trial with no real justice is a horrible way to start a democracy. Sure, Saddaam has it coming...but the Iraqis technically can not give it to him. He broke no Iraqi law, as he was the man determining law in Iraq during his time in power. He should've been tried internationally as a war criminal. To have the people of Iraq taking an eye for an eye mentality by setting up a puppet judiciary that was not intended to give justice but simply revenge will only hurt their democracy in the long run.

[snailpoo]

Here we have problems with perception and proof:


A mockery of a trial with no real justice is a horrible way to start a democracy.
This is an assertion. How is it a mockery? To get here, you need to prove your next point:

Sure, Saddaam has it coming...but the Iraqis technically can not give it to him. He broke no Iraqi law, as he was the man determining law in Iraq during his time in power.

Somehow, I don't think that this is an accurate and complete assessment of Iraqi law.

Regardless, there are three rather arbitrary points of law that you are assuming.

First, you are assuming that the old Iraqi law under Saddam was written (keep in mind that WRITTEN law and ENFORCED law are two different things) arbitrarily enough to allow Saddam do whatever he wanted.

And two, if you are right under your first assumption, you are assuming that the new Iraqi law wasn't written to apply retroactively. Keep in mind that the ban on retroactive application is a pecularity to American law that may or may not appear in the laws of every country and that may or may not apply to something as obviously wrong as massacre.

And finally, even if you get past one and two, equity IS something that appears in the laws of many countries. In order for your "mockery of a trial" label to work, you're basically claiming that Saddam is faultless under Iraqi law, both new and old. Are you really trying to argue this?

He should've been tried internationally as a war criminal. To have the people of Iraq taking an eye for an eye mentality by setting up a puppet judiciary that was not intended to give justice but simply revenge will only hurt their democracy in the long run.

Problems on two levels.

One, to try him internationally as a war criminal, he'd be tried for the crimes committed against the Iranians, the Kuwaitis, or the coalition forces. The moving party would NOT be the Iraqis.

Two, for all the talk of American Imperialism in invading Iraq, how much MORE do you enforce that perception if you remove Saddam from the jurisdiction of Iraq for trial of war crimes committed against other countries and NOT for the crimes he committed against his own people?



*the above is not legal advice, legal reserach, legal opinion, or legal in any way, and is not to be relied upon for any reason.

[Martino]

Bush rightly gets credit for this. But for Bush's decision to invade Iraq, Saddam wouldn't have been brought to trial. It's that simple. If Bush gets the blame for everything else that has gone wrong with Iraq, then he gets the credit for bringing Saddam to trial.

You can't bifrucate good from bad solely to give blame and not credit.

Bifrucate? :eek:

Oh, I'd like to see all murdering dictators put to trial. I could even live with Saddam's somewhat biased trial and execution if the US declared it was going to invade Iraq simply to remove Saddam, but the invasion was never about that, so how can Mr Bush claim credit for this outcome?

I really wish the US really was concerned about these dictators killing their own people, but I don't see any calls to put Suharto on trial. The Suharto regime killed 200,000 East Timorese alone. Ten times the estimated total for Saddam Hussein's regime.

Could it be that the US wasn't interested in the humanitarian aspect of the Iraq dictactorship?

The massacre in Dujail - horrible, but not secret. The world's media reported it at the time, but the US didn't act back then. The US could have removed Saddam at the time of the first Gulf War - the Kurds actually pleaded for US assistance. The US ignored them, and the world watched Saddam bloodily put down the Kurd insurgence.

You think those dead Kurds will rest easier because of the US's belated arrival?

No, the one thing Bush doesn't deserve is credit. Too many people have died because the US allowed Saddam to stay in power for so long, specifically to counter other elements in the region. As far as Mr Bush is concerned, Saddam's trial and execution is nothing more than politically convenient, just as it was when Saddam was caught.

Oh, and here's a reminder of how spectacularly wrong the US was, about everything to do with the Iraq invasion ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2479807.stm

[snailpoo]

Bifrucate? :eek:
No, the one thing Bush doesn't deserve is credit. Too many people have died because the US allowed Saddam to stay in power for so long, specifically to counter other elements in the region. As far as Mr Bush is concerned, Saddam's trial and execution is nothing more than politically convenient, just as it was when Saddam was caught.


Now this is amusing.

Was America right to take Saddam out, or wasn't it?

Oh, you disagree now but you agree then?

This is exaclty what I mean by bifrucate. Hey, it's one action, but suddenly you're able to only give blame and not credit for the results of the SAME ACTION?

Oh, and as for the mistake as to how long this was taking, I'm sure that the decade in which you changed your mind of whether Saddam should have been taken out changed the centuries of hatred between the Sunnis and the Shiites.

[Martino]

Now this is amusing.

Was America right to take Saddam out, or wasn't it?

Oh, you disagree now but you agree then?

This is exaclty what I mean by bifrucate. Hey, it's one action, but suddenly you're able to only give blame and not credit for the results of the SAME ACTION?

Oh, and as for the mistake as to how long this was taking, I'm sure that the decade in which you changed your mind of whether Saddam should have been taken out changed the centuries of hatred between the Sunnis and the Shiites.

I know, this is torture for me. Am I pleased or not?!?

:redface:

[Faithless]

I keep thinking that there are two different stories going on in Iraq with Saddam.

There is the fact that he is who he is. And he will be held to pay for that.

There is also the fact of what Iraq is, too.

You can't go back to Saddam. You've got to deal with Iraq as it is and whose got their fingers in its pie and fucking it up, now.

[yoMAMA]

This is AWESOME.

great day for the Iraqi people.

[robotic]

I don't understand the point of this thread, what Martino's objection is to about Saddam being sentenced to die? Even if you agree or disagree with the war, Saddam was a evil tyrant who has blood on his hands.

:D since this thread isn't in the rant room,
i'm guessing martino just posted it to inform/spread the news.

[Martino]

:D since this thread isn't in the rant room,
i'm guessing martino just posted it to inform/spread the news.

Haplesshobo knows he is on my ignore list, I don't know why he keeps talking about me. He never did apologise for all those comments he wrongly attributed to me in 2004/2005, but I've given up on him doing the right thing there.

This thread has been viewed 72 times and people are discussing the result - but hey, Haplesshobo, if you don't think the trial verdict is news, don't bother replying!

[Martino]

In Iraq tonight, there seems to be celebrations and protests about the verdict in almost equal measure.

Iraqi repsonses posted on the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/6118464.stm

MOHAMMED MAHER, 27, COMPUTER PROGRAMMER, AL ANBAR PROVINCE

The verdict is unfair - Saddam has not committed any of the crimes that he has been accused of.

The events are not as they were portrayed and, in fact, Saddam was fighting armed militias in the north of Iraq and fighting the Islamic Dawa party in the south of Iraq.

I feel shocked at the decision to hang Saddam - I had expected the charge to be a life sentence.

The whole trial process has been unfair. And the proof of this is that the verdict has been delivered two days before the mid-term elections in the US - in which George Bush's Republican Party is struggling against fierce competition

I don't think the situation in Iraq will stabilise after this verdict. The decision to execute Saddam is like pouring petrol onto the fire. I think that rivers of blood will flow through the country.

There are many supporters of Saddam in the Al Anbar and Salahuddin provinces - and so the insurgency will actually escalate after these latest events.

MOHAMMED SAADI, 34, CIVIL SERVANT, BAGHDAD

I congratulate myself and the Iraqi people after delivering the verdict to hang Saddam.

And I had hoped all his associates will meet the same fate.

The verdict is what I expected. And Saddam and those around him deserve this end for the crimes they committed against the Iraqi people.

I believe the trial has been fair - and the proof of this is that judge found one of the defendants, Mohammed Azawi Ali, not guilty because of lack of evidence and ordered his release.

Unfortunately, I don't expect the situation on Iraq to be calm after this verdict. Saddam has many supporters and spread across many different parts of the country.

But there is a feeling of joy among members of my immediate family, and in my home at the outcome of the trial.

FAIZ AHMAD, 31, STUDENT, BASRA

I am overwhelmed by a mixture of feelings - joy and anxiety, caution and surprise.

I am relieved to see the end of the dictator and the painful memories of his rule - right up to his angry and provocative appearance in court.

However, I feel cautious and anxious because of the expected reaction from terrorist groups who wished to see Saddam returned to power.

The court's verdict should not be taken lightly. The armed groups who supported Saddam will attempt to avenge themselves on the Iraqi people and push for the destruction of the country.

I don't believe that Saddam's trial and that of his associates was 100 per cent fair because of the intervention by the Iraqi government in appointing judges and forcing some of them to resign.

Nevertheless, I believe the trial is acceptable because it allowed Saddam and his associates to defend themselves before the court. This is a right that was denied to people of Iraq when they were in power.

I am also surprised that the verdict was reached today as I had thought that the trial would persist forever and there would be no resolution.

I am talking to you from my house in Basra and I may say there is a general feeling of relief that the era of dictatorship is over - though this is mixed with fear of the future.

ZAID, 34, UNIVERSITY LECTURER, BAGHDAD

Emotionally, I feel this is the right result and sentence. Rationally, I cannot judge.

I don't know if it was a fair trial; the performance of the defence in court wasn't that good.

Within Iraqi standards of justice, yes it was fair. But I think those standards are lower than the international standards of human rights.

When the trial began I was happy to see Saddam being tried in court in Iraq. But now, with hindsight, I think it would have been better to try him abroad.

I don't think Saddam was worried about the verdict. I believe he used the court to send messages and restore his image as the mighty Saddam. I think he succeeded in that aim.

The current political project is not going well, so Iraqis are comparing their situation now with what it was under Saddam.

He is not responsible for the mess we are in now; the current leadership is to blame for that.

I have to say, my situation was better under Saddam than it is today.

[Yeahman]

If ever there was someone to execute, it's Saddam. But I'm on the fence about. Not because he didn't get a fair trial. Trials determine guilt or innocence. He was guilty. It could've been summary execution for all I care. And not because I want to see him die. As someone against the death penalty, I don't enjoy watching people die. But I wonder if his execution is the only way to prevent even more deaths. We had lawyers killed. For as long as he's alive, there will be loyalists who will kill for him.

[Faithless]

So, is there a "just execution" clause in Catholic teaching?

[snailpoo]

ZAID, 34, UNIVERSITY LECTURER, BAGHDAD

Emotionally, I feel this is the right result and sentence. Rationally, I cannot judge.

I don't know if it was a fair trial; the performance of the defence in court wasn't that good.

Within Iraqi standards of justice, yes it was fair. But I think those standards are lower than the international standards of human rights.

When the trial began I was happy to see Saddam being tried in court in Iraq. But now, with hindsight, I think it would have been better to try him abroad.

I don't think Saddam was worried about the verdict. I believe he used the court to send messages and restore his image as the mighty Saddam. I think he succeeded in that aim.

The current political project is not going well, so Iraqis are comparing their situation now with what it was under Saddam.

He is not responsible for the mess we are in now; the current leadership is to blame for that.

I have to say, my situation was better under Saddam than it is today.

This is the one I agree the most with.

Except that things appeared better under Saddam for one reason: he kept the Sunni/Shiite sectarian violence under control.

And he controlled the sectarian violence by leading the Sunnis in massacring the Shiites.

[haplesshobo]

:D since this thread isn't in the rant room,
i'm guessing martino just posted it to inform/spread the news.

True, but look at the particular stuff he highlighted in those articles.

[Martino]

If ever there was someone to execute, it's Saddam. But I'm on the fence about. Not because he didn't get a fair trial. Trials determine guilt or innocence. He was guilty. It could've been summary execution for all I care. And not because I want to see him die. As someone against the death penalty, I don't enjoy watching people die. But I wonder if his execution is the only way to prevent even more deaths. We had lawyers killed. For as long as he's alive, there will be loyalists who will kill for him.

People said the violence would subside after he was captured. It got worse. He represents different things to different people. It would only reinforce the extreme opinions in the country, and of those that fight in the name of what they think Saddam represents. They can only become more fanatical, more entrenched in their belief that Saddam was their legitimate leader and that the Americans are occupiers, not liberators.

Any Christian should be able to understand the concept and power of a martyr.

I fear we will now see outright civil war in Iraq.

[Yeahman]

So, is there a "just execution" clause in Catholic teaching?
Yes. If there are no other means to keep society safe.
Vatican officials have come out to condemn the execution. No word from the Holy Father but I'd imagine that it'll come soon enough.

[friedfishribs]

A mockery of a trial with no real justice is a horrible way to start a democracy. Sure, Saddaam has it coming...but the Iraqis technically can not give it to him. He broke no Iraqi law, as he was the man determining law in Iraq during his time in power. He should've been tried internationally as a war criminal. To have the people of Iraq taking an eye for an eye mentality by setting up a puppet judiciary that was not intended to give justice but simply revenge will only hurt their democracy in the long run.

I can't agree with this. To not allow the victims of a dictator to hold him accountable is ridiculous. This trial may made a mockery of justice, but having Saddam tried internationally would have been a huge insult to the Iraqi people and a great blow to their sovereignty as a nation.

[yoMAMA]

Vatican officials have come out to condemn the execution. No word from the Holy Father but I'd imagine that it'll come soon enough.

probably have something along this line:

all Muslims are savages.

all non-European, non-western cultures are barbaric and inhuman.

y'all better convert or you godless heathens will rot in hell for eternity.

[Martino]

Britain is the only member of the EU not to formally object to Saddam Hussein's death sentence - universal abolition of the death penalty is enshrined in the EU Constitution.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6120050.stm

Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he is opposed to the death penalty, but it was for the Iraqis to decide the fate of former president Saddam Hussein.

"We're against the death penalty, whether it is Saddam or anybody else," he told reporters, but said there were "other and bigger issues" in Iraq.

An Iraqi court sentenced Saddam Hussein to death by hanging after he was found guilty of crimes against humanity.

Amnesty International has condemned the trial as flawed and unfair.

Mr Blair said Saddam's trial had given a "clear reminder of the barbaric regime" he had overseen.

'Sovereign country'

But during repeated exchanges at his monthly news conference, the prime minister said he would not elaborate further on his position on the death penalty.

Asked if he thought the conviction of Saddam would be a "turning point" for Iraq, he replied: "I've become very cautious about claiming turning points."

Later his spokesman said the British government had "reminded" the Iraqi government of its opposition to the death penalty, but said it had to be recognised that Iraq was a "sovereign country" with its own courts system.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell has warned that executing Saddam could make him a martyr and said he should be imprisoned for life.

But Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett told the BBC that only those "who had no quarrel with the regime all the way through" would think of Saddam Hussein in that way.

On the death penalty, Mrs Beckett said Britain did not approve of it but added: "This is the verdict of the Iraqi court and a matter for the government of Iraq."

Difficult circumstances

Saddam's trial had been as "independent as it could be made" in difficult circumstances, she said

"His crimes had been committed in Iraq against the people of Iraq and they wanted to see him tried and judged on the evidence presented there.

"An alternative could have been an international court and that would not have been the same."

But Malcolm Smart, of Amnesty International, said the death penalty was "particularly abhorrent" because the trial had not been fair.

He cited the murder of three defence lawyers and the resignation of one judge who complained of government interference.

"Every individual, whatever the magnitude of the crimes against them, has the right to a fair trial and unfortunately that test has not been met this time," he said.

"I welcome the opposition to the death penalty, but this has been a flawed process".

Saddam was convicted over the killing of 148 people in the town of Dujail following an assassination attempt on him in 1982.

US President George W Bush called the verdict a "milestone" for Iraq but the EU urged Iraq not to execute him.

Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague would not be drawn on whether he agreed with the death penalty decision, but congratulated the bravery of judges and witnesses "in the face of severe violence and intimidation."

Anas Altikriti, the British Muslim Initiative spokesman, said the "sad reality" was that the verdict could mean the Iraqi people would "never have their day in court".

"If he was indeed executed before the Iraqi people could find out what really happened over the last 30 or 40 years that would be another great tragedy," he said.

Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond - a longstanding critic of the government's military campaign - said it was a "very understandable verdict given the terms of the court".

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said there had been concerns about whether Saddam would receive a fair trial in Iraq "given the sectarian tensions that are rife".

[Martino]

And another perspective on the issues involved

An inconvenient history

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6124476.stm

What should happen to rulers found guilty of mass murder? The death sentence pronounced on Saddam Hussein has split the international community, but history shows there has never been a benchmark punishment for such awful crimes.

The outspoken opposition of France, Italy and Finland to Saddam Hussein's death sentence, contrasted with Tony Blair's reluctant displeasure and George Bush's seeming endorsement highlight the international moral divide about the ultimate judicial punishment.

There is a strong case for Saddam's judges not to sink to the depths that Saddam himself did in disregarding human life. On the other hand, a failure to implement the ultimate sanction may well be interpreted as weakness in a region where capital punishment is common.

The eminent human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson has suggested a third way - exile in a far land; the Falkland Islands, he says.

Mr Robertson draws a parallel with Napoleon's exile to St Helena in the South Atlantic, but that ignores the fact that banishment to an island had previously failed in Napoleon's case.

Having directly and indirectly caused the deaths of four- to six-million soldiers and civilians in his campaigns that ranged from Moscow to Madrid, there was, not surprisingly, a move to execute the man when he was forced to surrender in 1814.

Instead, he was exiled to Elba, a small island off the coast of Italy, only to escape back to France within a year. He promptly marched into Paris, flanked by loyal troops.

Defeated shortly afterwards at Waterloo, Napoleon's foremost marshal, Michel Ney, was executed by firing squad. But it was his vanquisher, the Duke of Wellington - perhaps as one soldier to another - who shielded the Frenchman until the British government opted for his exile in his final resting place, St Helena.

Scroll forward little more than 100 years, and the world was confronted with a similar dilemma, with Kaiser Wilhelm II, widely perceived to have initiated the World War I.

The Kaiser's abdication, brought about by military anarchy within Germany, saw him forced into exile in the neutral Netherlands at the end of the war.

When all sides met a year later to hammer out the Treaty of Versailles, they specifically called for the Kaiser's prosecution "for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties". Yet the Dutch queen, Wilhelmina, refused to extradite him, despite appeals from the Allies. He eventually died, in exile in June 1941.

When, 60 years ago, verdicts were handed down in the Nuremberg Trials of senior Nazis, there was a less sparing attitude.

Nurmeberg's precedent

But even then, the winning powers found it difficult to agree on what to do with those found responsible for the horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich.

Deprived of trying Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler, 21 representative Nazi leaders were put on trial and accused of a range of offences including the new crime of genocide.

Eleven were found guilty and hanged (Goering cheated the gallows by taking poison the night before), seven were sentenced to varying terms in Spandau Prison and three were acquitted.

It was a shadow of Stalin's suggestion that 50,000 of the most senior Nazis be executed.

Although the prosecution accused the Nazi defendants of crimes that were not criminal in international law at the time they were committed, the eventual sentences were less important that the verdicts and helped establish exactly what states were allowed to do in civil and international conflicts.

When it came to dealing with another of the chief Axis powers, Japan, the problem was that she had not signed the Geneva Convention, so technically was not in breach of it.

Emperor spared

Nevertheless, in another legal departure, 25 military and political leaders were charged with offences categorised as Class A (crimes against peace), Class B (war crimes), or Class C (crimes against humanity) in the key Tokyo War Trials of 1946-8.

All were found guilty by a panel of judges from 11 nations. Seven were hanged, 16 sentenced to life and two received shorter sentences.

But, notably, Japan's Imperial family, headed by its emperor, was spared and, indeed, continued to reign. And while in Germany and Japan there were other, related, trials of lesser war criminals, critics pointed out no Allied personnel were charged with war crimes. This was despite documented evidence of Stalin's excesses.

Such lengthy, public trials are rare. Romania's dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, was tried and executed by his fellow countrymen in just four days, pointing up the contemporary belief that modern dictators, like Saddam, should be tried by their peers.

Today, the international community has arrived at a broad consensus of what is acceptable behaviour, but has established no permanent international mechanism to convict those politicians and generals who transgress.

The two current tribunals for crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda are temporary arrangements and, argue some, one-sided. In this sense, Goering's scribbled note when first indicted with war crimes in 1946, has a ring of familiarity: "The victors will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused."

[Martino]

The reaction from the Arab world, part one ...

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has warned that hanging former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein will lead to even more bloodshed in Iraq.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6134626.stm

A Baghdad court condemned Saddam Hussein to death on Sunday for the killing of 148 Shia Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt against him.

Mr Mubarak said hanging the former president would only enhance sectarian and ethnic divisions between Iraqis.

They are the first public comments on the sentence by an Arab leader.

"Carrying out this verdict will explode violence like waterfalls in Iraq," Mr Mubarak is quoted as saying by Egyptian state-run newspapers.

The verdict "will transform (Iraq) into pools of blood and lead to a deepening of the sectarian and ethnic conflicts," he said.

'Festering sore'

A long-time critic of Saddam Hussein and ally of the US, Mr Mubarak and other Arab leaders are alarmed by the relentless violence in the country.

The BBC's Heba Saleh, in Cairo, says many Arab leaders can see Iraq turning into a festering sore, radicalising youth across the region and creating more anti-American sentiment.

She says that despite their view of Saddam Hussein as a dictator who brought disaster on his people, many have serious reservations about his trial, held under what they consider US occupation.

In an interview earlier this week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki told the BBC that if the appeals court confirmed Saddam Hussein's sentence, "it will be the government's responsibility to carry it out".

He said that the former Iraqi leader could be hanged by the end of the year.