- Reaction score
- 1,929
- Points
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DATE: JANUARY 16, 2005
PUBLISHER: TELEGRAPH GROUP LTD. [telegraph.co.uk]
AVAILABLE:
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/16/wirq116.xml
Former US Attorney General joins Saddam's defence team
By James Langton
(Filed: 16/01/2005)
One of America's most renowned human rights lawyers has astonished even close friends and supporters by taking on Saddam Hussein as a client and describing the former Iraqi dictator as "reserved, quiet, thoughtful and dignified".
While most of the world regards Saddam as a brutal dictator who gassed entire villages, launched wars that cost millions of lives and murdered thousands of political opponents, Ramsey Clark, a former US Attorney General, said he had been unfairly "demonised" by his captors.
Mr Clark spoke about his client, who faces trial in an Iraqi court for war crimes, after returning to the US from Jordan, where he met other members of his legal team for the first time. He provoked a furore by declaring that Saddam had been subjected to "savage" treatment by his American captors and comparing it with the abuse of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison. "Demonisation is the most dangerous form of prejudice," he said. "Once you call anything evil, it's easy to justify anything you might do to harm that evil. Evil has no rights, it has no human dignity, it has to be destroyed. That's how you get your Fallujahs, your Abu Ghraibs, your shock-and-awes."
As the US Government's senior law officer under President Lyndon Johnson, Mr Clark, 77, earned plaudits from the civil rights movement. He oversaw the framing of the law to extend voting rights, ordered the trial of errant police officers, refused to sanction wire-tapping of Martin Luther King, and fought against the death penalty - helping to stop federal executions for 20 years.
He has since adopted increasingly unlikely causes, defending Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader and accused war criminal, in a lawsuit brought by Muslim rape victims; and representing Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the Rwandan pastor accused of summoning Hutu death squads to massacre Tutsis.
Now he has unnerved even his admirers by defending a man accused of ordering 300,000 killings. Although he has been blocked by US authorities from talking to Saddam, Mr Clark previously met the dictator several times and visited Iraq early in 2003 to protest against the planned US-led invasion.
He said he was shocked by the "savage presentation" of Saddam after US forces found him hiding in a hole in the ground. The former Iraqi leader was "dishevelled, with his mouth open, people probing his mouth", Mr Clark told the New York Observer. "This is hardly the road to peace if you want respect for human dignity."
He said the court that would try Saddam was "a creation of the US military occupation'' and did not meet the standards of international law.
Mr Clark wrote to Saddam and Iraq's former foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, offering to represent them "because I thought it was essential that they have independent contact immediately to assure their proper treatment". He said the former Iraqi president was a decisive, knowledgeable person and his lawyers' lack of access to him was a major violation.
An Arab member of Saddam's legal team also disputes the US account of his arrest, saying the dictator was praying in a friend's house when he was seized. According to Khalil al-Duleimi, Saddam says he was prevented from fighting to the death only because his weapon "was far from me". He claims to have been "terribly tortured" by the Americans.
As a young US marine, Mr Clark witnessed the Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg. As attorney- general he clashed with President Johnson over Vietnam. More recently he has been involved with the far-left International Action Center, which has led demonstrations against the war in Iraq.
One conservative organisation, Right Nation, called for him to be tried for "sedition and treason'' and a conservative columnist, Michelle Malkin, accused him of "compulsive anti-Americanism".
Among the few who defend him is the New York lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who says Saddam's trial must be perceived as fair. "Ramsey's being involved increases the chances that it will be perceived as a fair trial because he is a very good lawyer, very smart and very tough."
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005. Terms & Conditions of reading.
Commercial information. Privacy and Cookie Policy.
PUBLISHER: TELEGRAPH GROUP LTD. [telegraph.co.uk]
AVAILABLE:
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/16/wirq116.xml
Former US Attorney General joins Saddam's defence team
By James Langton
(Filed: 16/01/2005)
One of America's most renowned human rights lawyers has astonished even close friends and supporters by taking on Saddam Hussein as a client and describing the former Iraqi dictator as "reserved, quiet, thoughtful and dignified".
While most of the world regards Saddam as a brutal dictator who gassed entire villages, launched wars that cost millions of lives and murdered thousands of political opponents, Ramsey Clark, a former US Attorney General, said he had been unfairly "demonised" by his captors.
Mr Clark spoke about his client, who faces trial in an Iraqi court for war crimes, after returning to the US from Jordan, where he met other members of his legal team for the first time. He provoked a furore by declaring that Saddam had been subjected to "savage" treatment by his American captors and comparing it with the abuse of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison. "Demonisation is the most dangerous form of prejudice," he said. "Once you call anything evil, it's easy to justify anything you might do to harm that evil. Evil has no rights, it has no human dignity, it has to be destroyed. That's how you get your Fallujahs, your Abu Ghraibs, your shock-and-awes."
As the US Government's senior law officer under President Lyndon Johnson, Mr Clark, 77, earned plaudits from the civil rights movement. He oversaw the framing of the law to extend voting rights, ordered the trial of errant police officers, refused to sanction wire-tapping of Martin Luther King, and fought against the death penalty - helping to stop federal executions for 20 years.
He has since adopted increasingly unlikely causes, defending Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader and accused war criminal, in a lawsuit brought by Muslim rape victims; and representing Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the Rwandan pastor accused of summoning Hutu death squads to massacre Tutsis.
Now he has unnerved even his admirers by defending a man accused of ordering 300,000 killings. Although he has been blocked by US authorities from talking to Saddam, Mr Clark previously met the dictator several times and visited Iraq early in 2003 to protest against the planned US-led invasion.
He said he was shocked by the "savage presentation" of Saddam after US forces found him hiding in a hole in the ground. The former Iraqi leader was "dishevelled, with his mouth open, people probing his mouth", Mr Clark told the New York Observer. "This is hardly the road to peace if you want respect for human dignity."
He said the court that would try Saddam was "a creation of the US military occupation'' and did not meet the standards of international law.
Mr Clark wrote to Saddam and Iraq's former foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, offering to represent them "because I thought it was essential that they have independent contact immediately to assure their proper treatment". He said the former Iraqi president was a decisive, knowledgeable person and his lawyers' lack of access to him was a major violation.
An Arab member of Saddam's legal team also disputes the US account of his arrest, saying the dictator was praying in a friend's house when he was seized. According to Khalil al-Duleimi, Saddam says he was prevented from fighting to the death only because his weapon "was far from me". He claims to have been "terribly tortured" by the Americans.
As a young US marine, Mr Clark witnessed the Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg. As attorney- general he clashed with President Johnson over Vietnam. More recently he has been involved with the far-left International Action Center, which has led demonstrations against the war in Iraq.
One conservative organisation, Right Nation, called for him to be tried for "sedition and treason'' and a conservative columnist, Michelle Malkin, accused him of "compulsive anti-Americanism".
Among the few who defend him is the New York lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who says Saddam's trial must be perceived as fair. "Ramsey's being involved increases the chances that it will be perceived as a fair trial because he is a very good lawyer, very smart and very tough."
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005. Terms & Conditions of reading.
Commercial information. Privacy and Cookie Policy.
