Trying Tyrants

How do you try a deposed dictator for crimes against his own people in a country that has no legal system? This was the question Michael A. Newton, a law professor at Vanderbilt, and Michael P. Scharf, a law professor at Case Western, faced in 2005 when they were charged with creating the Iraqi tribunal that would try Saddam Hussein for crimes against the Iraqi people.

It was a tall order. They had to create a system that would withstand the intense scrutiny of those who had suffered under Saddam's brutal regime, as well as an international audience eager to see evidence of the rule of law in post-invasion Iraq. They had to choose which of a decades-long list of atrocities would serve as the chief criminal charges. They had to establish procedures for a courtroom where all participants—prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges—would face constant assassination attempts. And they had to allow the presumption of innocence and the opportunity to defend himself to a defiant ruler who refused to cede his absolute power.

Fortunately, as they relate in Enemy of the State: The Trial and Execution of Saddam Hussein (St. Martin's, 305 pp., $26.95), neither was a stranger to the esoteric practice of trying war criminals. Newton had helped establish war crimes tribunals in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, where he prepared the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic. Scharf had assisted the prosecution of the brutal African dictator Charles Taylor.

But neither was prepared for the circus that ensued as Saddam and some of his closest advisers were given their day in court. "I don't answer to this so-called court, with all due respect," Saddam insisted as the trial began. He was dressed in a dapper suit, looking the exact opposite of the bedraggled figure U.S. troops had pulled from a hole in the desert two years earlier. "I reserve my constitutional rights as president of the country of Iraq. I don't acknowledge either the entity that authorizes you or the aggression, because everything based on a falsehood is a falsehood."

The crime at the center of the trial was a campaign of murderous revenge Saddam had directed against citizens in the small town of Dujail. While the list of atrocities attributed to the Iraqi president was long, and his presumed victims numbered in the thousands, the events in Dujail provided ample evidence and witnesses on which to build a case. In creating a structure loosely modeled after the post-World War II war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg, Newton and Scharf sought to establish an atmosphere of fairness in the midst of a nation—and a world—clamoring for the blood of a tyrant. The degree to which they succeeded may be debated by legal scholars for decades, but their story provides fascinating insights into the very meaning of the phrase "rule of law."

Michael A. Newton appears 7:30 p.m. Oct. 6 at Davis-Kidd Booksellers.