Contrary to what his people who ruled for more than 35 years used to see, the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appeared with a medium-thick beard, wearing a dark uniform and a white shirt in his first interrogation session in the case of the Dujail massacre (40 kilometers north of Baghdad) on such days in 2004. Months after his arrest following the US invasion of the country in 2003.

Iraqi lawyer Khalil Abboud Saleh al-Dulaimi defended Saddam, who was accused of being responsible for the killing of dozens of civilians in the aforementioned area on October 19, 1982, against the backdrop of an attack on the convoy of the late President.

In the massacre, 143 residents of the town were killed and many properties were destroyed, while the survivors were sentenced to exile at home for a period of 4 years.

Saddam Hussein appears before Judge Raed Juhi (and Kala

First investigator

The young judge, Raed Juhi, was appointed in 2004 as the head of the team that investigated Saddam Hussein after his arrest on December 13, 2003, where he assumed the task of presiding over the investigative judges in the Iraqi High Criminal Court, which included 24 judges, 16 prosecutors, and a large number of investigators and experts. Sentenced to death, which he carried out at the end of 2006.

What attracted attention during the interrogation session was that Jouhi interrogated Saddam, who was born in 1971 and holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Baghdad University in 1993 and a graduate of the Judicial Institute in Baghdad also in 2002, and he also holds a master’s degree in international law from the United States in 2010.

In a previous press interview, Juhi, who later assumed several official duties, including a judge of the Iraqi High Criminal Court, and the most recent of which was the director of the office of the current Prime Minister, Mustafa al-Kazimi, stated that his mission in 2004 to investigate Saddam Hussein was initially aimed at convincing him that he was accused and not. He is considered president, explaining that Judge Medhat Al-Mahmoud was supervising the judiciary at that time, and after a few days of the invasion, the judges returned to their work, at a time when Iraq was official and legal according to international law under the American-British international occupation.

According to the International Geneva Convention and Security Council Resolutions 1483 and 1511, the United States and Britain were responsible for administering Iraq as two occupying countries, so they assigned Medhat al-Mahmoud to supervise the Iraqi judicial body, and he was appointed to this position.

Juhi investigated with Saddam for two years, where he formed the investigation team and was the chief investigative judge, with a team that included more than 60 investigators, 100 employees, logistical experts and document experts, and there were offices in various governorates and with this team the investigation of Saddam Hussein and his companions was administered.

Johi investigated Saddam for two years and the trial opened the gates of fame for him (Getty Images)

Johi fame

Personally, the controlled appearance of Johi during the interrogation with Saddam opened the doors of fame to him, and enabled him to form the image of a judge who was not afraid of the fierce personality formed by Saddam Hussein, but the interrogation was not without - according to observers - the influences and political pressures in addition to revenge and revenge against Saddam and the symbols of his regime .

John Nixon, a senior analyst of the leadership figures in the CIA, had previously worked on the late president’s character, analyzed and wrote reports about it for the US administration. He was the first to work in the Iraq office that was established in 1997, according to Nixon himself, and when Saddam was arrested Nixon was the first person to recognize him from the important signs to identify him, most notably the impact of the bullet in his leg during the attempt to assassinate the late Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qasim at the end of the 1950s, and the second mark is the tattoo on one of his hands, which is the mark placed by the Albu Naser clan. Saddam Hussein belongs to it, and the last sign is his lower lip as a result of his addiction to smoking cigars.

In the fifth chapter of his book "Interrogating the President" issued in 2017, which includes many secrets of the investigation with Saddam Hussein, Nixon talks about the beginnings of his conversation with him about Iraqi history and his relationship to the events that struck Iraq since the assassination attempt on Abdul Karim Qasim and his relationship with the Iraqi Revolution Council.

Nixon also deals with a number of Iraqi events, including weapons of mass destruction and the Iran-Iraq war.

In this regard, he also mentions how Saddam was psychologically tortured by preventing him from sleeping by exposing his cell to loud noises.

About the experience of his interrogation of Saddam, people often asked him, How did you find a clash?

Or was he crazy?

Nixon replies, "During the time I spoke with Saddam Hussein, I found him in all his mental strength."

Al-Hayani considered Saddam's trial to be political par excellence (Al-Jazeera)

Revenge and revenge

Iraqi political analyst and academic Muhammad al-Hayani believes that the appointment of a young judge like Johi to investigate Saddam Hussein outside all controls and contexts, even moral ones, is very surprising, indicating that it is known that judges assume such positions only after they reach the age of forty years until they are stripped of their lustful instincts or start By vanishing to be more accurate in justice.

The process of revenge and revenge appears clearly and explicitly in the trial of Saddam Hussein and the method of investigation with him not only in the Dujail case, but in all other files, and this is what made it political par excellence, but all of this did not affect Saddam’s symbolism, as the published videos show - according to Al Hayani - During his trial, which is enjoying high levels of viewers so far, people admire his toughness even while he was raised to the gallows, and he did not care, but shocked everyone by his speaking with the judges, and the way he responded to them during his trial sessions.

This interrogation, and the subsequent trial sessions, were nothing but attempts to undermine Saddam’s personality and courage. However, he appeared coherent by ignoring all the judges and investigators, because his trial was purely political. This is how Hayani responds to a question by Al-Jazeera Net about whether political influences played a pivotal role in changing The path of Saddam's trial or not?

Haddad confirmed that the Iraqi judiciary was free of any political influences during the investigation with Saddam (Al-Jazeera)

Suicide

However, Judge Munir Haddad disagrees with Hayyani and affirms that the Iraqi judiciary is free of any political influences during the investigation, trial and death sentence issued against Saddam in the Dujail case, to record for himself with this independence a historical event, but he does not deny that Saddam’s personality was not normal and easy, and many judges refused Join this court, and he remembers how one judge traveled to Saudi Arabia for Hajj and another to the Kurdistan region, describing the matter as suicide and almost insane.

Haddad - who is the first judge to meet the late Iraqi president after his arrest - believes that Juhi investigated Saddam Hussein as an investigative judge and not as a criminal judge, and he had no political motives during the course of the investigation with Saddam and his appointment to these tasks came in accordance with legal requirements, and he has been practicing the profession of judges for a long time. Saddam Hussein's regime.

Harb saw that political roles and foreign and domestic pressure greatly affected Saddam's execution (Al-Jazeera)

Recurring scenarios

Usually the political role prevails over the legal, judicial, legislative and constitutional role during the trial or investigation with heads of states and major political figures, so we find that the political impact is very influential in that, and this phenomenon is not new or strange - according to the legal expert Tariq Harb - and many of the presidents and regimes In other countries, politics faced the fate of Saddam Hussein himself.

Each new regime accuses the one before it the charges and actions it considers crimes, but the political roles and foreign and domestic pressure greatly affected the access to the death penalty against Saddam in the Dujail case and others, as Harb says to Al-Jazeera Net and confirms that the issue is known, but it is realistically something and from The legal point of view is another thing.

It is noteworthy that the Supreme Criminal Court in Iraq issued death sentences by hanging Saddam and two former officials after they were found guilty of killing 143 Shiites in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in the early eighties.

It also sentenced to death Barzan Ibrahim Al-Tikriti, the half-brother of the late president, Awad Ahmed Al-Bandar, who presided over the Revolutionary Court in the Dujail events.

The late Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was sentenced to life imprisonment, even though Prosecutor Jaafar Mousavi had requested the execution.

The court also sentenced 3 of the former officials on trial in this case, Abdullah Kazem Al-Ruwaid, his son Muzhar Abdullah Al-Ruwaid and Ali Dayeh Ali, to 15 years imprisonment, but it acquitted Muhammad Azzawi at the request of the prosecutor.