What this murder demands

The cowardly brutality of the summary execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has shocked the world. The vengeful and sectarian nature of Iraq’s occupation-imposed puppet government has been proven beyond doubt. No executioner’s hood can conceal its disgrace. George W Bush’s “new Iraq” stands exposed for all to see. The era that has ended is not that of Arab nationalism; it is the era in which the hypocrisy and impunity of US imperialism can be cloaked in lies.

Maliki and militias suicide

The Iraqi Higher Criminal Court that sentenced President Saddam Hussein to death is unequivocally illegal under international and Iraqi law.¹ Created by US Proconsul L Paul Bremer, it was never anything but a US-orchestrated puppet court.² A key aim was to establish a veneer of legality to an illegal invasion of a sovereign state. The catalogue of due process violations that characterised its proceedings stands testament to the impunity with which the pre-written trial outcome was imposed.³ The imposition of a death sentence after an unfair trial is a grave violation of international law and an affront to universal human values.⁴ US claims about protesting this execution are pure propaganda.

President Saddam Hussein was a prisoner of war with protected status under international law.⁵ He remained the lawful president of Iraq having never capitulated to foreign invading armies and given the illegality of the 2003 US-led invasion. His execution constitutes a war crime under international humanitarian law.⁶ It was illegal under Iraqi law and an affront — in coinciding with the festival of Eid Al-Adha, a time of reconciliation and generosity — to Islamic tradition and culture.⁷

It was not Saddam Hussein’s death warrant that Nouri Al-Maliki signed so publicly but his own political and moral downfall along with that of the militias and gangs he is leading. The haste and the glee with which Maliki rushed through the execution exposes clearly the sole division that exists in Iraq, between the occupation and its local lackeys and the Iraqi population and its resistance to America’s murderous agenda. This execution finds its place within an American strategy that at the least seeks to humiliate Iraq and at worst aims to foment mass civil strife if not a wider regional conflict.

The criminal Maliki government cannot now be recognised by any government, institution, association or citizen as either a protector of Iraq and its people, or of legality and Iraqi custom.

Only the Iraqi national popular resistance is the guarantor and protector of Iraqi sovereignty and the continuity of the Iraqi state. The national popular resistance is the only legal authority that can represent the Iraqi people and determine a path towards peace and stability in Iraq.⁸

Law should defend justice, not imperialism

Defeated on the ground militarily, politically and morally, the US-led occupation can only attempt to cow the Iraqi people with atrocities. It is a hopeless policy. Nothing will allow the United States and its criminal partners to impose on Iraq a future that is contrary to the fundamental interests and rights of the Iraqi people.

International institutions of law and human rights practice, by their silence or timidity, have not only failed the people of Iraq but also the people of the world. International law is the arbiter and guarantor of world peace. Mandated authorities are tasked to oversee the actions of states and governments and intervene as necessary to protect not only inalienable individual and collective rights but the standing of law as the moral foundation upon which world peace is secured.

No recognition to blood-soaked criminals

We demand that governments across the world withdraw recognition and any legitimacy afforded to the current criminal Iraqi government and recognise the Iraqi resistance as the sole representative of the Iraqi people and the continuity of the Iraqi state, its sovereignty and integrity.

We demand that the UN General Assembly and international and national judicial bodies, syndicates and associations act to redress the failure of international institutions and individuals and use available discretionary powers or courts with universal jurisdiction over serious war crimes to bring to justice all those responsible for and connected to the illegal summary execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.⁹

We call upon all political groups and human rights organisations, along with progressive and humanist intellectuals, to unite to defend peace, international law and justice by defending the Iraqi people and its legitimate representative, the Iraqi resistance.

2007 must be the year in which the illegal and murderous occupation of Iraq is brought to an end.

2007 must be the year in which law defends justice, not imperialism, and in which the moral foundations upon which world peace depends are renewed by unseating and prosecuting the war criminals of Washington and London and their Green Zone puppets in Baghdad.