Pax Americana In Iraq Is Changing - Part 15 - US Justice Work.

In Baghdad, a capital city plagued by Neo-Salafi suicide bombers and renegade Shi'ite militias, the Americans and the Iraqi government have turned to an unusual measure to help implant the rule of law - part of an evolving Pax Americana. They have erected a legal Green Zone, a heavily fortified compound to shelter judges and their families and secure the trial of dangerous persons.

At the same time, however, the Pentagon is making emergency plans for a gradual withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates says he is actively involved in drafting them, adding: "I consider this contingency planning to be a priority for this department". Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman stresses that the Pentagon is planning a phased reduction in line with the Bush administration's view that some long-term US presence may be needed in Iraq. Whitman says: "Planning for reducing our forces, drawing down our forces, is certainly something that is an appropriate thing to do". There are about 157,000 US troops in Iraq. Reducing them in the coming years will be a big challenge, not only to planners of Pax Americana but also to their allies in Baghdad.

President George W. Bush has repeatedly appealed to Congress to give the US military more time to help stabilise Iraq before judging the success of this year's US troop build-up. Congressional Democrats have launched a push to end the war in Iraq, with a growing number of Republicans adding to pressure for a change of strategy. Bush has urged Congress to wait until September when the US commander in Iraq, Lt Gen David Petraeus, is to deliver a progress report on the war, before making a decision (see Part 13, fap1-IraqBushPressedJuly16-07).

Iraq's parliament, however, went into summer recess for a month on July 30 after political leaders failed to agree on laws which Washington saw as crucial to stabilising the country. The parliament is to reconvene on Sept. 4, just two weeks before Gen Petraeus and US Ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker are to report to Congress on the success of Bush's Iraq strategy and make recommendations. One of the pending issues is the fate of oil-rich Kirkuk and other disputed zones in northern Iraq on which a crucial July 31 deadline was missed by the government in Baghdad and this has angered the Kurds.

A report by Oxfam and the NGO Co-ordination Committee network in Iraq on July 30 said about 8m Iraqis needed immediate aid because of the humanitarian crisis caused by the war. They said 15% of Iraqis could not regularly afford to eat; 70% were without adequate water (up from 50% in 2003); and 28% of children were malnourished.

The main challenge being faced by the US in Iraq is the interference in this country by an axis of anti-US forces led by the Shi'ite theocracy of Iran. This is being countered by a US-led alliance involving Sunni Arab states known as "the [GCC] Six+Two". With the US sponsoring an international peace conference to feature a proposed interim statehood for the Palestinians favouring Fatah, the latter alliance is to build up a US-backed system of Arab military deterrence against the Iran-led axis (see news6Palestine&RegionalImplicationsAug6-07).

The Rule of Law Complex, as known by the government, is in the Baghdad district of Rusafa and held its first trial in June. For Iraqi officials, working at the compound is so fraught with risk that it often requires separating themselves and their families from life outside the complex. The New York Times on July 29 quoted "a judge who lives in the compound with his wife and children", as saying: "Our work is really a challenge. I have not seen Baghdad for three months".

The court's first defendant was a Syrian Neo-Salafi militant, Ramzi Ahmad Isma'il Muhammad, known as Abu Qatada. This is just one of many non-Iraqi terrorists held in the complex whose trials will reveal the roles of Syria, Iran and other neighbouring states in trying to undermine Pax Americana in Iraq. Tried for kidnapping, killing his hostages and carrying out other bloody attacks, Abu Qatada was convicted in the complex's high-surveillance courtroom and sentenced to death.

The utility of the fortified complex will depend on the Iraqis' ability to expand their trial capacity as well as their track record in applying justice evenhandedly to Shi'ites and Sunnis alike, including the Neo-Salafis who are by far the most violent strain of Sunni Islam. On July 29, the US Ambassador to the UN and the previous envoy to Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad openly accused Saudi Arabia of having turned a blind eye to the flow of Neo-Salafi militants to Iraq. Saudi Arabia's official sect, Wahhabism, is Salafi; and Wahhabi imams in Saudi Arabia have recently issued fatwas (religious decrees) calling on such militants to destroy revered Shi'ite shrines in Iraq. Equally challenging is for the Iraqi judges to try members of Shi'ite death squads involved in the killing of Sunnis.

The notion of helping the Iraqis establish protected legal enclaves is an important element of an American security plan prepared by Gen Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. The hope is that a network of legal complexes will be established in other parts of Iraq, starting with the capital of Anbar Province, Ramadi, where work is to begin in the next several months. Anbar is a predominantly Sunni region where the US has armed tribes to fight Neo-Salafis terrorising their people in recent years.

Since the Rusafa court began hearing cases in June, it has tried only 43 suspects - about one a day. The US provides criminal investigators, lawyers and para-legal staff to train the Iraqis to run the complex, which includes accommodations for witnesses, investigators, the Baghdad Police College and an expanding number of detainees.

The 55-member US team includes Justice Department and military personnel as well as contractors, and there are only four Iraqi investigators. But an additional 26 Iraqi investigators are being trained by the FBI, according to Michael Walther, a senior US Justice Department official who runs the American military's Law and Order Task Force. And by next March, the small courtroom where Abu Qatada was tried will be replaced by an $11m court built with American reconstruction funds.

The Central Criminal Court in Baghdad is to conduct about 5,000 trials this year. Col Mark Martins, the staff judge advocate for Petraeus's military command, estimates that once the new Rusafa court was built the complex will be able to handle about a third of that caseload. The government has just taken over the cost to protect and run the complex and has approved $49m for the effort.

Despite its status as a protected venue for trying Iraq's most infamous terrorists and militants, the Rule of Law Complex is not immune from the many problems roiling Iraq's legal system. Those include the crush of prisoners which has emerged with the surge of US and Iraqi military operations. To try to reduce the backlog of cases, prisoners from over-stuffed jails in Kathemiya and elsewhere have been transported to Rusafa, where they are finger-printed and given retina scans.

The Rusafa jail's capacity, which started out at 2,500 prisoners, will expand by more than 5,000 by the end of the summer. The main detention building at the complex there is cleaner and less malodorous than many Iraqi prisons; but with 15 detainees in each cell, the conditions have reached maximum capacity under international standards.

The New York Times said: "When a reporter was escorted by the Iraqi prison director through one of the newly erected tent-covered jails a short drive away, a prisoner who gave his name as Dawood Yousef, 46, pressed his way to the bars and yelled that he had been picked up in a sweep of Abu Ghraib and had spent five months in various prisons, including a month in Rusafa, without being told why he had been arrested or when his case would go to trial". A US official took down the details.

An Iraqi Shi'ite investigator at the Rusafa complex raised another concern: sectarian agendas at the Shi'ite dominated Interior Ministry. The investigator said ministry officials had made him the subject of an inquiry when he expressed his intention to marry a Sunni woman. He asked: "What kind of investigation is that?"

Under Iraqi procedures, the main phase for recording evidence takes place before the trial when an investigative judge questions witnesses and prepares a dossier for the panel of judges to review. The trials seem relatively brief to observers familiar with the US system. With the extensive security at Rusafa, it is not easy for Iraqis to attend the proceedings, so videotapes are made.

In a legal system which has relied heavily on confessions and less on forensic investigations at the crime scene, there are often allegations of torture. In a July 3 trial at the Rusafa court, the judges acquitted four defendants of murder and rape on the grounds that their confessions appeared coerced. Medical reports pointed to possible torture, and physical evidence was lacking. The stunned defendants received the verdict with enormous relief, according to a videotaped record of the trial.

The Americans say they have been encouraged by the tenacity with which the investigators pursued Abu Qatada in particular. The NYT quoted "a judge involved in investigating the case" as saying: "We called him the wolf. It was not easy to get him to talk". The investigators relied heavily on witnesses, who were taken through a special entrance in the court offices so they could be interviewed in confidence. Their statements were entered in a file which only the judges were allowed to read. The evidence in the file was enough to persuade the panel of three judges - one Sunni and two Shi'ites - to convict Abu Qatada on two counts: possessing weapons as part of an armed group opposing the state, which led to a 30-year sentence, and terrorist crimes, which were deemed a capital offense. His conviction and punishment are on appeal.

A more demanding test of the impartiality of the system will come soon when a Shi'ite policeman comes to trial. Identified only as Lieutenant Colonel A, he is being tried on charges that he assaulted and brutally tortured dozens of Sunni Arab captives in his custody on behalf of a Shi'ite militia.