The United States is dispatching a large team of prosecutors and other criminal justice experts to Iraq to prepare for likely genocide trials of Saddam Hussein and his closest associates, a justice official said late Saturday.
The move marks the first specific step by the administration of President George W. Bush toward a practical resolution of the fate of the ousted Iraq leader blamed for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his own citizens as well as those of neighbouring countries.
"We are just literally there as advisers to the Iraqi special tribunals," said the official on condition of anonymity. "We are joining the other nations of the coalition - the Spanish, the British, the Australians, the Polish, and several others, who are also going to be contributing the same types of personnel."
The first members of the US team, which includes about 50 prosecutors, investigators, legal and forensic experts, were scheduled to leave for Baghdad this weekend.
The rest were to join the so-called Regime Crimes Adviser's Office being set up within the Coalition Provisional Authority, the US-led occupation government of Iraq, "in the next few weeks," according to the official.
The group will comprise specialists from most key branches of the Justice Department, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and regional prosecutors' offices.
Charges against Saddam, captured by US troops in December, were likely to include the use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish town Halabja in 1988, when as many as 5,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed, according to legal experts.
He is also routinely accused of ordering summary executions of thousands of Iranian prisoners during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, forcibly deporting Kurdish and Turkomen families he deemed unloyal to southern Iraq and creating 900,000 internally displaced citizens throughout the country.