The New York Times > International > Middle East > For Hussein, a Spartan Life at His Former Palace: "In prison, Mr. Hussein has asked for some vestiges of the pleasures he enjoyed when he moved between dozens of palaces. 'This was a man whose regime used a shredder to turn human bodies into ground beef,' said Mr. Amin, the 46-year-old rights minister, who spent years abroad as an exile chronicling the abuses of Mr. Hussein's government and petitioning foreign governments and rights organizations to shun the Iraqi government.
'And now he sits there in his cell and asks for muffins and cookies and cigars,' he said.
Mr. Hussein and his top lieutenants are being held at Camp Cropper, a heavily fortified compound that crouches behind high walls topped with rolls of razor wire, beneath sandbagged watchtowers manned by soldiers with machine guns. The camp lies within a vast American complex known as Camp Victory, which includes a network of palaces as well as lakes that Mr. Hussein filled with fish. Planes using Baghdad International Airport pass low over the prison, 10 miles from the center of Baghdad.
For the trials, courtrooms are being readied in one of the vast, neo-imperialist buildings inside the former Republican Palace compound in central Baghdad that make up the Green Zone, the headquarters for the Allawi government and 2,500 American military and civilian officials. The five-judge panels that will preside at the juryless trials will have the power to impose death sentences on Mr. Hussein and his associates, some of whom wept when they were told at the July hearing that they faced possible execution. For Mr. Hussein and his victims, a trial in the new court building, which The New York Times was asked not to identify for security reasons, will have a special irony. Mr. Hussein, who favored an architectural style emphasizing huge sandstone columns and portals, will face a reckoning in one of the buildings he erected to glorify his rule. In the dock, he will be a short walk away from the Republican Palace beside the Tigris River, once his main seat of power.
The Allawi government believes that the Iraqis, subjected to decades of terror, will begin to recover only when they see the men responsible brought to account. 'Without justice, I don't see any possibility of healing the wounds in this society,' Mr. Amin, the human rights minister, said. 'These people turned Iraq into a 'massgrave-istan' by the scale of their crimes.'"
'And now he sits there in his cell and asks for muffins and cookies and cigars,' he said.
Mr. Hussein and his top lieutenants are being held at Camp Cropper, a heavily fortified compound that crouches behind high walls topped with rolls of razor wire, beneath sandbagged watchtowers manned by soldiers with machine guns. The camp lies within a vast American complex known as Camp Victory, which includes a network of palaces as well as lakes that Mr. Hussein filled with fish. Planes using Baghdad International Airport pass low over the prison, 10 miles from the center of Baghdad.
For the trials, courtrooms are being readied in one of the vast, neo-imperialist buildings inside the former Republican Palace compound in central Baghdad that make up the Green Zone, the headquarters for the Allawi government and 2,500 American military and civilian officials. The five-judge panels that will preside at the juryless trials will have the power to impose death sentences on Mr. Hussein and his associates, some of whom wept when they were told at the July hearing that they faced possible execution. For Mr. Hussein and his victims, a trial in the new court building, which The New York Times was asked not to identify for security reasons, will have a special irony. Mr. Hussein, who favored an architectural style emphasizing huge sandstone columns and portals, will face a reckoning in one of the buildings he erected to glorify his rule. In the dock, he will be a short walk away from the Republican Palace beside the Tigris River, once his main seat of power.
The Allawi government believes that the Iraqis, subjected to decades of terror, will begin to recover only when they see the men responsible brought to account. 'Without justice, I don't see any possibility of healing the wounds in this society,' Mr. Amin, the human rights minister, said. 'These people turned Iraq into a 'massgrave-istan' by the scale of their crimes.'"
Comments