BAGHDAD, Dec 10: Iraq’s US-installed interim leadership set up on Wednesday a special tribunal to try Saddam Hussein-era war crimes. The tribunal will sit in the former president’s personal museum.

The tribunal would have the power to try suspects in absentia, Dara said, including Saddam, who is still at large.

“The Governing Council approved late last night (Tuesday) the creation of an Iraqi penal tribunal to try former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime for their crimes against humanity,” council member Mowaffak al Rubaie said.

The approval of draft statutes for the Iraqi Special Tribunal has been long-awaited after the April 9 fall of Saddam lifted the lid on decades of repression.

“These crimes include those committed against the Islamic Republic of Iran, against the state of Kuwait and against the Arab, Kurd, Turkmen, Assyrian, Shia and Sunni sons of the Iraqi people for the period from July 17, 1968, until May 1 of this year,” said Rubaie.

Saddam’s Baath party came to power in 1968.

The council had struck an agreement with the US-led coalition forces to hand over criminals to be judged by Iraqis, he said.

However, “it will take time” before the court sits in judgement, Nuredin Dara, a member of the Governing Council who is himself a judge, told a press conference.

Five Iraqi judges had to be picked by the council and it was unlikely to begin work before a new government takes charge in July, he said.

Defendants would have legal defence and its findings could be appealed.

Based on Iraqi law as well as international legislation and charters, the tribunal could also call on foreign judges or experts with experience of other similar tribunals, he said.

The council held a press conference in the huge museum once open to the public and which has already been converted into the courthouse.

Topped by a chiming clock tower, the building was constructed in central Baghdad’s Al-Harthiya quarter after the 1991 Gulf War to display Saddam memorabilia from gifts he received as head of state to his clothes and letters.

Judges will sit beneath wall ceramics of the scales of justice and a verse from the Holy Quran urging those who sit in judgement to be just.

The statutes have yet to be published.—AFP