I am a prosecutor by profession, so it goes against my whole life to say this, but why? The purpose of a trial is to establish whether the crime was committed, whether the accused committed it, and the penalty to be applied.

Saddam Hussein spent years slaughtering people. He was openly and notoriously the dictator of Iraq, these things were done in his name and at his command.

Was the person Samir grabbed that night Saddam Hussein?

Do we have some rope?

I know that these spectacle trials, like Nuremberg, have an additional purpose of clarifying the extent of the crimes and the defendants’ direct responsibility, for historical purposes. That’s nice. But really, I wouldn’t shed a tear for justice if he’d been shot in the hole and left for the jackals.

I notice the world has gone on just fine without Uday and Qusay having a trial, and that Himmler’s and Hitler’s guild is widely accepted despite their evasion of court.

These lawyers raise the trial to a fetish object, of intrinsic value. Nonsense.