THE HAGUE, Dec 27: Captured former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein should be tried outside Iraq, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) told Swiss media.

“What we’re asking is that Saddam Hussein be judged and that he has a fair trial. Those are the basic elements,” Swiss lawyer Carla del Ponte told Swiss newspapers Tribune de Geneve on Saturday.

But she added: “Our experience tells us that an international tribunal outside of Iraq would be better.”

Saddam’s American captors, who swooped on the former strongman two weeks ago, have yet to say where he will go on trial, though many experts in international law have said he would likely come before an Iraqi tribunal unveiled in early December.

Del Ponte, who is currently prosecuting Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes in The Hague, compared the upcoming case of Saddam and that of the ex-Yugoslav leader, for whom she said a trial in Belgrade would have been impossible.

“You can imagine the threats to witnesses if the trial were held there,” she said. “And judging an ex-president in his country doesn’t help with reconciliation.”

Despite the contention over the location of the trial, Del Ponte was upbeat regarding Saddam’s arrest, calling it proof that leaders she described as criminal can be apprehended.

Despite the detention of Milosevic, the two top war crimes suspects of the 1991-95 Bosnian war, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic, have yet to be apprehended.—AFP