The United States is planning to conduct trials of Iraqis alleged to have committed war crimes against American forces and could possibly include President Saddam Hussein and his sons, US officials said yesterday.
Officials from the Pentagon and State Department said the US did not intend to turn to an international tribunal to carry out these proceedings.
Mr W. Hays Parks, special assistant to the Army Judge Advocate General, said trials could be handled by US military commissions, military courts martial or in civilian federal courts. He accused Iraq's government of three specific violations of the Geneva Conventions and related laws of war and said others were being investigated.
Mr Pierre-Richard Prosper, US ambassador for war crime issues, said possible punishments for those convicted ranged from incarceration to the death penalty.
"The current abuses, the crimes particularly against US personnel, we believe that we have the sovereign ability and right to prosecute these cases," Mr Prosper said. "We are of the view that an international tribunal for the current abuses is not necessary."
US allies in the war, including Britain, had the same right to prosecute suspected war criminals, he said. The only international tribunal in existence, he added, was the permanent International Criminal Court, but that court lacked jurisdiction over this war because neither America nor Iraq were parties to the treaty creating the court.
Mr Prosper said an Iraqi judiciary process scheduled to be established following the war could handle trials relating to "past abuses" by members of Saddam's government. Officials said Iraqi exiles were being consulted about the matter.
"We have begun to catalogue the numerous abuses, both past and present, that have been committed by the Iraqi regime. Our troops have been given the additional mission of securing and preserving evidence of war crimes and atrocities that they uncover," Mr Prosper said.
US officials had been investigating the actions of the Iraqi leadership, including Saddam, his sons Qusay and Uday, and military leaders like Ali Hassan al-Majid, nicknamed Chemical Ali, whose death was confirmed yesterday by the British.
The first of three alleged Iraqi violations cited by Mr Parks involved video-tape shown on Iraqi television on March 23rd of "deceased US or coalition service members."
The bodies were shown sprawled on the floor in puddles of blood, with an Iraqi dragging them around. Mr Parks said the tape depicted "fundamental violations of the Geneva Convention obligations, to include prohibitions on pillage and ill-treatment of the dead, the duty to respect the dignity of all captured combatants and possibly prohibitions against wilful killing, torture, inhumane treatment or the wilful causing of great suffering or serious injury to the body or health of the POW".
The second allegation involved the interrogation of five US prisoners of war that aired on Iraqi television on March 23rd. Mr Parks said this broke Geneva Convention prohibitions on placing POWs in "humiliating and insulting circumstances designed to make them objects of public curiosity".
The third involved alleged acts of "perfidy" in which Iraqi forces carried white flags signifying surrender only to attack and dressing in civilian garb "to draw coalition forces into ambushes". Mr Parks said US forces in Iraq were giving captured Iraqi soldiers the protections due to them under the Geneva Conventions and other international laws.
More than 7,000 Iraqi prisoners are being held by US-led forces in the war. - (Reuters)