Iraq to Start Old Regime Trial Process Within Days

BAGHDAD - Iraq's Governing Council could complete procedures within days for starting keenly awaited trials of loyalists of the ousted government, officials in the U.S.-led administration said Tuesday.

"We expect the Governing Council to make a decision on this in the next few days. There could be a decision tomorrow," a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) official said.

"They are having final discussions on the text of the statute and other issues," he said.

The official defended a decision to try members of ousted President Saddam Hussein's administration in Iraq and not at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Human rights groups have warned that courts established in Iraq under U.S. occupation risk being seen as forums for politically motivated revenge.

"The Iraqi judiciary...remains a strong and credible institution," the official said. "We don't believe there is enough intimidation to prevent this being done (in Iraq)."

Coalition and Iraqi authorities are mulling whether the growing insurgency would make it difficult to give popular elections a role in forming a sovereign Iraqi government by June next year.

The official said legal experts from the United States, Britain, Spain, Ireland and Australia would join Iraqis in setting up the courts, but declined to predict when the first trials might take place.

The tribunals -- trying war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide -- will be used mainly to try "high value" suspects. Forty of the 55 Iraqi fugitives on the U.S. most-wanted list have been captured or killed.

The official said he doubted that Saddam Hussein, who has eluded a massive security dragnet despite a $25 million bounty on his head, would ever be put on trial.

"Are we going to catch Saddam Hussein alive? I think it's unlikely," he said. U.S. forces killed his two sons, Uday and Qusay, in a shoot-out in July.

He said the Iraqi government formed by June would be free to reestablish the death penalty, although most of the countries supplying experts setting up the tribunal do not have it.

"The sovereign government will make whatever decisions they want," he said.

By Andrew Hammond