US to give Saddam to Iraqis within two weeks

1.00pm

DUBAI - Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will be given to the new Iraqi government for trial within two weeks, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on Monday.

"Saddam and the others will be handed over to the Iraqis, to the government," he said in comments to Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera. The trials would start "as soon as possible".

"All the current detainees, without exception, will be handed over to the Iraqi authority. The handover will take place within the next two weeks," he said.

United States troops captured Saddam in December near his home town of Tikrit and he has been in US hands ever since, held as a prisoner of war at an unknown location.

The United States has agreed to give him -- and other indicted officials in its custody -- to the Iraqis for trial once a sovereign government sets up a special tribunal capable of conducting a fair trial after June 30.

A senior British official said last week that Saddam would be handed over to a special Iraqi tribunal, but only when the Iraqi justice system was able to proceed with the trial.

"It depends when the Iraqis are ready to do that," the official said, adding that the first cases were likely to be held only in the autumn.

The tribunal plans to charge some of Saddam's associates by the end of this year, the top court administrator Salem Chalabi said last week.

It hopes former Saddam aides captured by US occupation troops will testify against him during their prosecution, which could take many months.

Officials say the aides would be tried before Saddam appears in the dock in a Baghdad complex that once stored gifts for him. The aides' trials could help the tribunal prove a chain of command linking Saddam to crimes against humanity.

The Red Cross said Saddam Hussein should either be released or charged when sovereignty is transferred to the Iraqi government.

Under international and military law, prisoners of war and civilian internees should be released at the end of the conflict and occupation, unless there are charges against them, said the spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Nada Doumani.

She said the case of the ousted dictator is comparable to that of any other prisoner of war - a status conferred on him by the detaining authorities.

"If he is not charged, then the law says that at the end of war, of occupation, he should be released," she said.

Ms Doumani's statement has focused attention on the legal limbo of thousands of Iraqi prisoners, who, unlike the ousted president, are not covered by prisoner of war status.

The US authorities have released large numbers of Iraqis from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison ahead of the transfer of power to the interim Iraqi government.

Scores more prisoners were freed yesterday from the jail that was at the heart of the prison abuse scandal that shocked the world, following the leaking of an ICRC report.

The ICRC said last week the number of detainees there had fallen to 3,291 this month from 6,527 in March, however it does not know how many have been released and how many transferred elsewhere.

The Americans have said that after the hand-over, they will continue to hold between 4,000 and 5,000 prisoners deemed a threat to the coalition.

- INDEPENDENT and REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq