Iraqis may get legal, but not physical, custody of Saddam

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The United States intends to transfer legal custody of former president Saddam Hussein to Iraq’s interim government if asked by the country’s new prime minister, U.S. occupation administrator L. Paul Bremer said Tuesday. But Bremer indicated that the U.S. military would continue to retain physical custody of Saddam until the Iraqi government has an appropriate detention facility to hold him.

“If they ask for him, which I have every reason to believe they will … . we’ll turn him over,” Bremer said. He added, however, that “legal custody and physical custody can be two separate things.”

Meanwhile, President Bush said Tuesday that the United States wouldn’t stand in the way of rebel Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr – whose forces fought American troops all spring and whom Bush once described as a thug – if he seeks to play a political role in Iraq.

At a White House news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Bush said it would be up to the new Iraqi government to decide whether to allow al-Sadr to participate in the political process.

“The interim Iraqi government will deal with al-Sadr in the way they see fit,” Bush said in the White House Rose Garden. “They’re sovereign. When we say we transfer full sovereignty, we mean we transfer full sovereignty. And they will deal with him appropriately.”

Bush’s remarks came after Iraqi President Ghazi al Yawer invited al-Sadr to participate as a political leader in Iraqi elections scheduled for January.

Bush used the al-Sadr scenario and questions about the possibility of turning over Saddam to show that his administration intends to take a hands-off approach once the new Iraqi government assumes power July 1.

Iraq’s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has been discussing the handover of Saddam with U.S. occupation authorities, although it was not clear whether he is seeking physical as well as legal custody of Saddam and other imprisoned Iraqi leaders. Allawi said Monday night that Saddam and his lieutenants should be transferred to Iraqi control in two weeks, after the country recovers formal sovereignty on June 30.

“We have specific promises on this from the coalition authority, and the negotiations are under way,” Allawi said Tuesday in a televised statement to CNN.

“We’ve been talking to him about it,” Bremer said. “Allawi has been clear that he’s going to ask.”

U.S. officials said Tuesday that the physical turnover of prisoners is likely to come much later than June 30 because of the shaky security situation caused by a relentless insurgency against the U.S. occupation. Speaking at the White House, President Bush said Saddam and other senior figures of his Baath Party government will be turned over to Iraqi custody only when “appropriate security” is in place.

By giving Iraq legal, but not physical, custody of Saddam, the U.S. and Iraqi governments could achieve a deal that is in the best interests of both nations, a senior U.S. official involved in the process said. If the United States retained legal custody of Saddam, who has been classified by the U.S. government as a prisoner of war, it could prompt challenges from human-rights groups and Saddam’s lawyers because prisoners of war are supposed to be released or charged with a crime when hostilities end.

For the Iraqi government, obtaining legal custody could provide an important symbolic boost to its authority after June 30. At the same time, Iraqi leaders have indicated that assuming physical custody of Saddam could pose problems for the new government.

Saddam, who inspired fear among Iraqis for a quarter of a century and ordered the execution of many, would be a prisoner like no other in Baghdad. He has long been the focus of hatred for millions of Iraqis who suffered under his rule. But his loyal followers, including those in the insurgency, also could seek ways to rescue him from captivity.

Partly for those reasons, the United States has held him in a secret location since his capture last December.

A special tribunal has been created in Baghdad to try Saddam and top officials of his government. The president of the tribunal, Salem Chalabi, has said that prosecutors will seek to charge Saddam and his lieutenants with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in connection with his government’s repression of ethnic Kurds and Shiite Muslims. Among the incidents that likely will figure prominently in the charges is the use of poison gas against Kurdish villages in 1988 and the bloody suppression of a Shiite insurrection after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Bremer said the tribunal will not be ready to issue an indictment by June 30, but he said an arrest warrant from an Iraqi court could provide sufficient grounds to transfer legal custody.