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| Chair Saddam sat in during his trial |
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| Saddam swung here |
Even better than that, though, is the fact that I’m
officially four weeks from finishing this last class, which is killing me. It’s
this whole “theoretical framework” kind of thing and I live and work in the
real world. It just doesn’t work like that, which makes it frustrating. I’ve
selected a real issue but the whole “let’s go through this pretend exercise
like it would really work” is futile. I know how I would approach the problem
if I had the power to fix it, and it’s not theoretical.
I hate it so very much but I can see the end. What’s somewhat
ironic is that after I finish this, I have five days off of classes before I
begin a new certificate program. This one is through work and is only two
months long. It’s a diversity and inclusion certification through Cornell. I’m
going to be the most educated person without a Ph.D. Maybe one day I will use
some of this knowledge. Inchallah.
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| Last stairs Saddam climbed |
Right now, it’s tough coming up for air. Work is insane
because we’re doing a staffing review on top of everything else. I’m up for
this since I am weirdly stoked by HR stuff (hence the pursuit of a second
masters’ degree) but I work in a place where the right hand doesn’t speak to
the left hand. It’s kind of frightening with your HR department asks you what
your staffing situation is. You’d think they’d know. I sent a query for
something, say X, to the head office and got back an email asking me for X. Sigh.
Fun project.
In other news at work, I got to take a short field trip. It
was the third time I’ve been allowed to leave the walls of the 100 Acre Sandbox
and the destination was closer than the other two times but oh man, it was far
more fascinating. Our office is located at the site of one of Saddam Hussein’s
former palaces, and it’s next door to the court where he was tried. Presently,
there’s a small museum that houses a bunch of artifacts related to his case.
By that I mean it’s mostly paperwork – paperwork used to
convict him. Evidence, like rosters of people he’d executed, pictures of mass
graves and records from trial. They even showed us seven containers (think
semi-truck) that were still filled with paperwork that they had yet to record,
and a storage room filled with shelves upon shelves of boxes containing files.
It was just so sad.
In addition to the paperwork, though, they had the gallows where
he had been executed, complete with “FBI evidence” sticker on it. There was a replica
of his hidey-hole (which was underground), and several display cases of the
stuff with him when they found him. Think Q-tips, prayer beads and corn pads. They
also had the clothes he was wearing as well as his sunglasses and knife. It was
really creepy.
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| Torture chamber used by Saddam's son to punish Olmpic athlets who didn't perform well. |
That was just a very bad family.
Then we went into the courthouse, which hasn’t been used as
a courthouse since 2012. I can see it from the embassy and wondered what it
was, although people probably have told me before. I mean, this place is
literally right across the street from the 100 Acre Sandbox. That street is
al-Kindi and the traffic just zooms by. Anyway, both the museum and the old
courthouse as essentially in the same place and the museum will eventually move
into the same building.
Like in Belarus (and I guess a lot of Soviet countries),
defendants are kept in cages, but unlike the Soviet ones, they are merely
playpens and not the whole cage. In this courtroom, there were four rows of
cages, each with two seats. He showed us
the one where Saddam was caged, next to, I guess, his attorney. Apparently Saddam
had told that guy for years to burn the evidence, but he didn’t and that’s what
got him convicted.
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| View from front |
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| View from rear |
In the Iraqi court, the judge (and maybe jury?) sit on a
raised platform. There’s a “scales of justice” thing on the back end of the
wall. To the judge’s right, there’s a long row for the prosecution and o the
judges left, there’s what looks like a large changing room. It is a box with
curtains; it’s the witness stand. The entryway to the witness stand is from the
next room over; it’s so that the witness can be hidden from the view of the
defendants, who sit in their caged playpens in front of the judge.
There are no observers in the courtroom; instead, there are two rooms at the very back, one on that floor and one on the floor up. (Speaking of which, there is no elevator in the building and I think we went up five floors to get to the top.)
