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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Ruth Wedgewood

Aired April 27, 2003 - 10:17   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KELLI ARENA, CNN ANCHOR: For the current unlucky 13 Iraqi leaders in custody and for others to follow, what is next? Well, we turn to Ruth Wedgewood, now a professor of international law at Johns Hopkins University and a former prosecutor. She's at Yale University studios in New Haven, Connecticut.
Thank you for joining us.

RUTH WEDGEWOOD, PROFESSOR, JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: Thank you.

ARENA: Well, this certainly is a very complicated issue. Let's start with the idea of the U.S. has said that it wants to prosecute those that are guilty of committing crimes against its own, against soldiers, war crimes, for example. Let's at least start there. Doesn't it have that right under the Geneva Convention?

WEDGEWOOD: That's actually anticipated by the Geneva Convention. The third Geneva Convention of 1949 that has frequently been invoked in the last year or two. And Geneva 3 says that military tribunals are actually the preferred place for trial because it's assumed that brother officers will be duly considerate of their other fellow officers even on the other side. So trying it in the military court is nothing unusual and there's actually an affirmative duty on the part of the military actor, which includes us as Iraq's occupier, to look for offenders against the law of war and put them on trial. So this is not some use or patient, this is the modality of the third Geneva Convention -- assumed would be the case.

ARENA: All right. Where it gets messy, of course, is when you deal with crimes that happen before the U.S. led invasion, crimes that happened during against Iraqis. Lots of discussion going on. U.S. working with some within the Iraqi exile community, but of course, lots of criticism about that. People saying wait a minute; these people have not even been in the country for years. They don't understand the pain and suffering that went on. How do you proceed from here?

WEDGEWOOD: Well, the phrase that the administration has used is an Iraqi-led process. That could mean a lot of things. One thing you can do is; for example, involve local Iraqis who have not been in exile as lay fact assessors even if they're not judges. But if the -- the model that's been used in Sierra Leone, that's trying to be used in Cambodia, is to mix local Iraqi personnel or rational personnel with some international judges and lawyers so that the warring or suspicious ethnic communities in the local areas has some assurance that there's some monitoring from a neutral party. ARENA: But where do you find lawyers within Iraq that are not seen as tainted by the Hussein government, those that are actually educated in ways of a democratic society?

WEDGEWOOD: Well, that's a tough task. You have to bet people very carefully. But I guess the point I wanted to make is that there still is a way to involve Iraqis even if they're not trend lawyer because many countries have enrolled laypeople as factual assessors. We do it with a jury. Other countries can do it with a tribunal of two or three lay assessors and a presiding judge who knows the law.

If I may mention too, I think the other reason why the U.S. has to take a role here and not give it over to the U.N. is that throughout the process, we're going to need to debrief people on the links to weapons of mass destruction and to terrorist networks. And if we give over defendants to the custody of the U.N., we give up that access.

ARENA: Ruth, a lot of people have said this has got to be done, you know, sooner rather than later, that otherwise Iraqis will start carrying out their own personal acts of vengeance, that we may see even more chaos. What is a realistic timeframe in your mind in order to get a good, solid foundation?

WEDGEWOOD: Well, I agree with the argument that knowing that someone's going to take care of justice is a good way of quelling local revenge and taking the law into your own hands, but you can't be unrealistic. In the war crimes tribunals, even in the U.N., it's taken a year or more to go on complicated trials. Nuremberg was the exception. It was a very, very good, dadaistic education exercise done in nine months. But it's not the way we put on trials now and it had a kind of a hearsay quality that was not the way that we're used to in modern courts marshal or in crimes against humanity trials. So I think realistically for major leadership figures with due process, it's going to take half a year or a year to prepare the trial and maybe as much as six months to a year to try them.

In Rwanda, if I might just add, the national courts were self- appointed to carry out very summary trials, two-hour trials, with the death penalty at the other end and the world community was greatly condemnatorious, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), for having done that. Putting someone to death is a very serious business; even locking them up for life is serious.

ARENA: Well said. Ruth Wedgewood, thank you so much for taking time.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired April 27, 2003 - 10:17   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KELLI ARENA, CNN ANCHOR: For the current unlucky 13 Iraqi leaders in custody and for others to follow, what is next? Well, we turn to Ruth Wedgewood, now a professor of international law at Johns Hopkins University and a former prosecutor. She's at Yale University studios in New Haven, Connecticut.
Thank you for joining us.

RUTH WEDGEWOOD, PROFESSOR, JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: Thank you.

ARENA: Well, this certainly is a very complicated issue. Let's start with the idea of the U.S. has said that it wants to prosecute those that are guilty of committing crimes against its own, against soldiers, war crimes, for example. Let's at least start there. Doesn't it have that right under the Geneva Convention?

WEDGEWOOD: That's actually anticipated by the Geneva Convention. The third Geneva Convention of 1949 that has frequently been invoked in the last year or two. And Geneva 3 says that military tribunals are actually the preferred place for trial because it's assumed that brother officers will be duly considerate of their other fellow officers even on the other side. So trying it in the military court is nothing unusual and there's actually an affirmative duty on the part of the military actor, which includes us as Iraq's occupier, to look for offenders against the law of war and put them on trial. So this is not some use or patient, this is the modality of the third Geneva Convention -- assumed would be the case.

ARENA: All right. Where it gets messy, of course, is when you deal with crimes that happen before the U.S. led invasion, crimes that happened during against Iraqis. Lots of discussion going on. U.S. working with some within the Iraqi exile community, but of course, lots of criticism about that. People saying wait a minute; these people have not even been in the country for years. They don't understand the pain and suffering that went on. How do you proceed from here?

WEDGEWOOD: Well, the phrase that the administration has used is an Iraqi-led process. That could mean a lot of things. One thing you can do is; for example, involve local Iraqis who have not been in exile as lay fact assessors even if they're not judges. But if the -- the model that's been used in Sierra Leone, that's trying to be used in Cambodia, is to mix local Iraqi personnel or rational personnel with some international judges and lawyers so that the warring or suspicious ethnic communities in the local areas has some assurance that there's some monitoring from a neutral party. ARENA: But where do you find lawyers within Iraq that are not seen as tainted by the Hussein government, those that are actually educated in ways of a democratic society?

WEDGEWOOD: Well, that's a tough task. You have to bet people very carefully. But I guess the point I wanted to make is that there still is a way to involve Iraqis even if they're not trend lawyer because many countries have enrolled laypeople as factual assessors. We do it with a jury. Other countries can do it with a tribunal of two or three lay assessors and a presiding judge who knows the law.

If I may mention too, I think the other reason why the U.S. has to take a role here and not give it over to the U.N. is that throughout the process, we're going to need to debrief people on the links to weapons of mass destruction and to terrorist networks. And if we give over defendants to the custody of the U.N., we give up that access.

ARENA: Ruth, a lot of people have said this has got to be done, you know, sooner rather than later, that otherwise Iraqis will start carrying out their own personal acts of vengeance, that we may see even more chaos. What is a realistic timeframe in your mind in order to get a good, solid foundation?

WEDGEWOOD: Well, I agree with the argument that knowing that someone's going to take care of justice is a good way of quelling local revenge and taking the law into your own hands, but you can't be unrealistic. In the war crimes tribunals, even in the U.N., it's taken a year or more to go on complicated trials. Nuremberg was the exception. It was a very, very good, dadaistic education exercise done in nine months. But it's not the way we put on trials now and it had a kind of a hearsay quality that was not the way that we're used to in modern courts marshal or in crimes against humanity trials. So I think realistically for major leadership figures with due process, it's going to take half a year or a year to prepare the trial and maybe as much as six months to a year to try them.

In Rwanda, if I might just add, the national courts were self- appointed to carry out very summary trials, two-hour trials, with the death penalty at the other end and the world community was greatly condemnatorious, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), for having done that. Putting someone to death is a very serious business; even locking them up for life is serious.

ARENA: Well said. Ruth Wedgewood, thank you so much for taking time.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com