Posted on 12/15/2003 7:37:25 AM PST by Pan_Yans Wife
Iran demanded on Monday that former Iraqi President Saddam Hoseyn, who led a destructive war against the Islamic Republic between 1980 and 1988, is tried at an international court.
"We want that the crimes of Iraq’s dictator are examined at a competent international court and he is put on trial" Government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh told reporters at a weekly press briefing.
His comment came more than 24 hours after the announce of the capture of the Iraqi tyrant by American Special Task Forces supported by Kurdish Peshmergas from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Jalal Talabani, with so far not a single high-ranking Iranian official having made any statement on the historic event.
While almost all Iranian media, including news agencies, both the State-controlled IRNA and the independent students news agency ISNA, as well as many internet news websites had covered the capture from the outset – IRNA even claims to be the first to have broke out the news worldwide --, the conservatives-controlled Radio and Television were lagging behind, broadcasting it with certain incredulity.
Pictures of the toppled Iraqi dictator showing a beggar-looking man, unshaved, dirty and haggard when captured in his "rat hole", or an American Army doctor checking his mouth decorated Iran’s Monday newspapers front pages.
However, Mr. Hamid Reza Asefi, the Iraqi born senior spokesman of the foreign Affairs Ministry had earlier expressed "Iranian people’s satisfaction" at the capture, saying that the Iranian people shares the joy of its Iraqi brothers".
"We are glad to see a man who has committed innumerable crimes against both his own people as well as those in the region is captured and for this reason he should be tried in an open court", Mr. Asefi told reporters without commenting further.
"It must be clarified in the court who were those equipping the Iraqi dictator to impose three big crises on the region," the official said, recalling the Ba’ath regime’s invasion of Iran, as well as its attack on Kuwait which entailed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the second Persian Gulf war, which led to his fall.
Ramezanzadeh said, "I hope Saddam’s fate will serve a lesson for those who do not succumb to the will of people".
"The contemptible submission of Saddam indicated that whoever does not submit to the will of people, will be forced to succumb to foreign pressures", he added in echo to some lawmakers from the reformist majority warning indirectly what happened to the Iraqi dictator awaits other ruling dictators.
Other politician and personalities said Iran should take advantage to push for its due war damages from Iraq, damages estimated at hundreds of billions US Dollars that the captured Saddam never accepted to compensate.
"Saddam and his henchmen have a notorious record for their crimes, including gassing Iranian forces during the 1980-1988 war as well as the Kurdish population, and brutally repressing Shi’ite and Kurdish uprisings in the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War", IRNA, the official news agency of Iran commented.
Tens of thousands of people also disappeared during his 24-year rule.
Mr. Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi Foreign Affairs Minister and an independent member of the American-approved Provisory Governing Council said in Baghdad Sunday that a court would be set up to conduct the trial of the former dictator, referring to the special tribunal the Council set last week to try all the Iraqi officials who served with Mr. Hoseyn for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
That needs to be repeated regularly, to the liberals who fawn over Carter.
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