Justice on hold: Accountability and social reconstruction in Iraq

International Review of the Red Cross

Volumn 90, Issue 869, 2008, Pages 5-28

  Stover, Eric ^a   Sissons, Miranda ^a   Pham, Phuong ^a   Vinck, Patrick ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84974668598     PISSN: 18163831     EISSN: 16075889     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1816383108000064     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. See John Simpson, “Saddam hanging taunts evoke ugly past”, BBC News, Baghdad, 30 November 2006.
2. See John Burns, “Hussein videos grip Iraq: attacks go on”, New York Times, 31 December 2006.
3. Larry Diamond, “What went wrong in Iraq”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83 (2004), p. 34.
4. The Coalition Provision Authority Orders are available at http://www.cpa-iraq.org/government/ governing_council.html (last visited 20 November 2007). Several orders deal with transitional justice measures, including Coalition Provision Authority Order No. 1, “De-Baathification of Iraqi Society”, CPA/ORD/16 May 2003/01
5. Coalition Provision Authority Order No. 2, “Dissolution of Entities”, CPA/ORD/23 May 2003/02
6. Coalition Provision Authority Order No. 7, “Penal Code”, CPA/ORD/10 June 2003/07
7. Coalition Provision Authority Order No. 13 (Revised), “The Central Criminal Court of Iraq”, CPA/ORD/18 June 2003/13
8. Coalition Provision Authority Order No. 15, “Establishment of the Judicial Review Committee”, CPA/ORD/23 June 2003/15
9. Coalition Provision Authority Order No. 35, “Re-establishment of the Council of Judges”, CPA/ORD/21 Sept 2003/35.
10. The jurisdiction of the Iraqi Special Tribunal covers the crimes mentioned above, as well as violations of stipulated Iraqi laws committed from 17 July 1968 to 1 May 2003. CPA Order No. 48, “Delegation of Authority Regarding an Iraqi Special Tribunal”, available at www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/ 20031210_CPAORD_48_IST_and_Appendix_A.pdf (last visited 20 November 2007).
11. Early in 1959 the government of Iraq, a military dictatorship, signed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. See Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted 9 December 1948, 78 UNTS 277 (entered into force on 12 January 1951, entered into force for the United States on 23 February 1989).
12. “Iraq poll 2007”, BBC News, 19 March 2007, p. 2.
13. See e.g. Eric Stover, William D. Haglund and Margaret Samuels, “Exhumation of mass graves in Iraq: considerations for forensic investigators, humanitarian needs, and the demands of justice”, Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 290 (6 August 2003), pp. 663–6.
14. Iraqi Voices: Attitudes toward Transitional Justice and Social Reconstruction, Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley, and ICTJ, May 2004.
15. See e.g. Iraq's Crimes of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds, Human Rights Watch/Middle East, New Haven, 1995.
16. Naomi Roht-Arriaza, “The new landscape of transitional justice”, in Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena (eds.), Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006, p. 2.
17. See Eric Stover, Hanny Megally and Hania Mufti, “Bremer's “Gordian knot”: transitional justice and the US occupation of Iraq”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 27 (2005), pp. 830–57.
18. See e.g. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, W. W. Norton, New York, 1999.
19. This was the finding of a five-year study of justice and social reconstruction in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia conducted by the Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley. See Eric Stover and Harvey M. Weinstein, “Conclusion: A common objective, a universe of alternatives”, in Eric Stover and Harvey M. Weinstein (eds.), My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, pp. 323–42.
20. Diamond, above note 3, p. 39.
21. Personal communication (Sissons) with US government officials. US Department of Defense, “Geneva Convention, EPWs and War Crimes”, briefing, Washington, DC, 7 April 2003.
22. “Iraq: Justice needs international role”, press release, Human Rights Watch, 15 July 2003.
23. See “Briefing paper: creation and first trials of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal”, International Center for Transitional Justice, October 2005, pp. 6–7.
24. CPA Order 48, above note 5.
25. See “Memorandum to the Iraqi Governing Council on the Statute of the Iraqi Special Tribunal”, Human Rights Watch, December 2003.
26. Iraqi Voices, above note 9, pp. i-iv.
27. Law of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (Law 10 of 2005), Official Gazette of the Republic of Iraq, 18 October 2005.
28. See Miranda Sissons and Ari S. Bassin, “Was the Dujail trial fair?”, Journal of International Criminal Justice, Vol. 5 (2007), pp. 272–86.
29. See David Cohen, “Transitional justice in divided Germany after 1945”, in Jon Elster (ed.), Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 59–88.
30. Quoted in L. Paul Bremer III, “How I didn't dismantle Iraq's army”, New York Times, Op-Ed, 6 September 2007.
31. Sissons interview with Dr Ahmed Chelabi, March 2006. On the lessons of vetting programmes see Alexander Mayer-Rieckh and Pablo de Greiff (eds.), Justice as Prevention: Vetting Public Employees in Transitional Societies, Social Science Research Council, New York, 2007.
32. See L. Paul Bremer III with Malcolm McConnell, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2007.
33. See Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 1, above note 4. This order designated the top four levels of party membership as “senior Party members”. This included the ranks of ‘udw qutriyya (regional command member), ’udw far (branch member), ‘udw shu ’bah (section member), and 'udw firqa (group member). In all cases, the Administrator could grant exceptions on an individual basis.
34. L. Paul Bremer, Coalition Provisional Authority press briefing, 25 November 2003 (on file with authors).
35. Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 2, above note 4.
36. Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 4
37. Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 5, “Establishment of the Iraqi Debaathification Council”
38. Coalition Provisional Authority Memorandum No. 1, “Implementation of De-Baathification Order No. 1”, CPA/MEM/3 June 2003/01.
39. Iraqi Voices, above note 9, pp. 51–52.
40. Jonathan Steele, “Anti-Baathist ruling may force educated Iraqis abroad”, Guardian, 30 August 2003, p. 16.
41. A new “Accountability and Justice Law” was passed by the Iraqi parliament on 12 January 2008, and approved by the presidency council on 3 February. For an overview of its contents see Miranda Sissons Briefing Paper: Iraq's New Accountability and Justice Law, International Center for Transitional Justice, January 2008, available online at http://www.ictj.org/images/content/7/6/764.pdf
42. See, e.g., Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity, Routledge, New York, 2001.
43. Iraqi Voices, above note 9, pp. 55–56.
44. Iraqi Voices., p. 51.
45. Iraqi Voices., pp. 48–50. A similar survey carried out in southern Iraq found that 98 per cent of the respondents wanted those responsible for human rights committed crimes during the previous regime to be punished, and that 77 per cent favoured a court process over non-judicial processes.
46. See Southern Iraq: Report of Human Rights Abuses and Views on Justice, Reconstruction, and Government, Physicians for Human Rights, 18 September 2003, p. 8.
47. Naomi Roht-Arriaza, “Reparations in the aftermath of repression and mass violence”, in Eric Stover and Harvey M. Weinstein (eds.), My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 121–39.
48. Iraqi Voices, above note 9, p. 40.
49. Iraqi Voices., p. 42.
50. Coalition Provisional Authority press release, “Ambassador Bremer announces creation of special task force on compensation for victims of the former regime”, Baghdad, 26 May 2004.
51. Council of the Presidency, Decision Number 3 of the Year 2006, Martyrs' Association Law, Iraqi Gazette No. 4018 (6 March 2006).
52. Council of the Presidency, Decision Number 4 of the Year 2006, Law of the Political Prisoners Association, Iraqi Gazette No. 4018 (6 March 2006).
53. Michael G. Gordon, “Justice from behind the barricades in Baghdad”, New York Times, 30 July 2007.
54. See Stover et al., above note 13, pp. 1–26.
55. Kirsten Campell, “The trauma of justice”, presented at the international conference on “Human fragility: rights, ethics, and the search for global justice”, University of the West of England (Bristol), January 2001.