By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council approved on Tuesday the creation of a special court run by Iraqis to try members of former president Saddam Hussein's government on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The tribunal, scheduled to be announced on Wednesday, will have broad powers of arrest and the right to prosecute anyone -- from Hussein to prison hangmen -- accused of involvement in the mass killings, forced expulsions and widespread torture that occurred during the 35 years that Hussein's Baath Party ruled the country. Unlike the special courts established to prosecute war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, which operate under the aegis of the United Nations and involve international jurists specializing in human rights law, this tribunal will be staffed with Iraqi prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys. That arrangement, although blessed by the U.S. government, has alarmed international human rights organizations, which contend Iraq's legal system is too corrupt and inexperienced to handle complex cases. In a last-minute concession to the rights groups, council officials said, the U.S. occupation authority asked council members to include a provision giving the council the right to appoint international judges if needed. The council's legal committee agreed to the amendment shortly before the full 25-member council voted on the law, the officials said. "It's a very important change, but it will still be an Iraqi-run process," an Iraqi official involved in drafting the law said. The tribunal will be the first attempt to bring to justice scores of members of Hussein's government, military and intelligence services for crimes committed between July 17, 1968, when the Baath Party came to power, and May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq. Council members said they would ask U.S. forces to hand over hundreds of former officials in American custody -- including 38 captured senior officials from the Pentagon's list of 55 wanted Iraqis -- as soon as the tribunal sets up a detention center.

A senior U.S. official in Washington said the Bush administration intended to deliver Iraqi suspects to the Iraqi courts for trial, although U.S. authorities may retain physical control over some to prevent escape attempts. Iraqis who "clearly need to be held accountable . . . will be turned over," the official said. "The plan is to defer to the Iraqis, but to work with them to ensure that it is a strong and credible process." Iraqi officials here also said scores of former government officials who are now free could be charged. "There will be many arrests," said Salim Chalabi, an American-educated lawyer who has been a key architect of the tribunal. The first trials could begin by summer, starting with the most prominent officials in custody, members said. They said they hope to try 400 cases within four years. "This is a major step toward starting the process of accountability and reconciliation in a damaged society," said Chalabi, a nephew of Iraqi political leader Ahmed Chalabi. With Hussein still on the run and his two oldest sons dead, officials said the first to be tried likely will be Ali Hassan Majeed, who ordered chemical attacks on ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq during the 1980s, and Hussein's once-powerful private secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud Tikriti. Defendants could face the death penalty if convicted.

Iraqi political leaders have been reluctant to involve the United Nations and international organizations out of fear the tribunal would be moved out of the country or dominated by foreigners, depriving Iraqis of the long-sought opportunity to judge their former dictator and his henchmen. The Bush administration, which has been involved in drafting the tribunal law, wanted the U.S.-appointed Governing Council to oversee the trials. The U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, has given the council special authority to establish the tribunal, meaning he will not have to sign the law for it to take effect. U.S. and Iraqi officials said Bremer and his aides have nevertheless reviewed the law and voiced support for it. "Nobody has any doubt over the capacity of the Iraqis to run this process themselves," an official with the occupation authority said. Council members and others involved in drafting the law insisted Iraqis were capable of convening a tribunal that meets international standards of fairness. "We have judges and prosecutors and courts," said council member Mahmoud Othman. "Iraqis should deal with the crimes of Iraqis. We can handle it." Another member, Dara Noureddine, a retired judge who was imprisoned for issuing a ruling counter to Hussein's wishes, said most Iraqi judges and lawyers were not members of the Baath Party or facilitators of Hussein's police state. "Saddam set up special courts to do his dirty work," he said. "We have many judges and lawyers who did not participate in that system who can do this job professionally." Judges for the tribunal will be nominated by an independent judicial council and approved by the Governing Council, council members said. Prosecutors, investigators and public defenders will be appointed by the Governing Council, the members said.

International legal experts will be asked to serve as advisers to the judges, lawyers and investigators, the members said. "They will have a monitoring role to ensure that the Iraqi judges comply with international standards of due process," Chalabi said. But international experts were unconvinced. They noted that the United Nations and the U.S. Justice Department both issued reports in recent months calling into question the competence and impartiality of Iraq's judicial system. A team of U.N. specialists concluded in August that Iraq had "a degraded justice system" that "is not capable of rendering fair and effective justice for violations of international humanitarian law and other serious criminal offenses involving the prior regime." Although human rights groups welcomed reports of the concession on international judges, they called the move insufficient. "Given the profoundly dysfunctional state of the Iraqi judicial system, we need a much more robust international involvement," said Paul van Zyl, director of country programs for the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York. Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch in New York, said he feared the Iraqi tribunals could "degenerate into political show trials." International experts and even some Iraqi officials have expressed concern for the safety of judges, lawyers and witnesses in light of continuing resistance attacks. In recent weeks, Hussein loyalists have assassinated more than a dozen Iraqis deemed to be collaborating with occupation forces. "Security will be a very big issue," Othman said. "We have to realize that there are people who will do everything they can to block these trials." An Iraqi official involved in the process said participants in trials likely would be guarded and witnesses could be relocated for their safety. "We will take extraordinary precautions," the official said. To address deficiencies in legal skills, the U.S. government has started a series of workshops in Baghdad to train Iraqi judges and lawyers. "We're going to make sure they're ready," a U.S. official involved in the process said. The tribunal will have hundreds of investigators, many of them foreigners, who will sort through reams of documents seized from Baath Party offices and dig through the more than 250 mass graves that have been identified across the country. The investigators also will accept information from relatives of people who were killed.

To be brought before the special court, suspects would have to be charged with at least one of four categories of crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or an assortment of specific offenses under Iraqi law, including the misappropriation of government funds and the invasion of another Arab nation. There will be 10 trial chambers, each with a five-judge panel. A nine-judge appellate court will handle appeals. Some rights groups have questioned the legality of establishing a tribunal while Iraq is under U.S. occupation, raising the possibility that not just the defendants, but many ordinary Iraqis, will reject the proceedings as illegitimate. But organizers of the court scoffed at that suggestion. "The real legitimacy lies in the mass graves," Chalabi said. "Except for those who committed the crimes, I don't think there will a single person in Iraq who will object to this." On Monday, the council again became a 25-member panel when it named Salama Khufaji, a dentist and professor at Baghdad University, to replace Akila Hashimi, who was mortally wounded in an attack Sept. 20. Like Hashimi, Khufaji is a Shiite Muslim. She is from Karbala. Staff writer Peter Slevin in Washington contributed to this report

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