Saddam Hussein and Nuremberg Trial

Dear Sadakat Kadri,

In "They'd do better sticking Saddam's head on a pole" (Sadakat Kadri, The Guardian, Tuesday April 4, 2006) you mention several times the Nuremberg trials and “Robert Jackson, the US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg”. You also write that:

“The preconditions for a new Nuremberg - tranquillity, stable conceptions of justice and clarity of governing purpose - are lacking.”

It’s curious that you forgot to mention the core of the Nuremberg trials:

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." - Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals - Nuremberg, Germany 1946

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan echoed the Nuremberg trials when he said that “the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.” (“Iraq war illegal, says Annan”, BBC News website, Thursday, 16 September, 2004)

Your “legal opinion” about the Saddam Hussein’s trial is not convincing not because of the many reasons you gave in your articles but because of what you didn’t write. There should be a new Nuremberg trial indeed, but it’s not Saddam Hussein who should be in the dock.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini