![]() ![]() Hutch began anxiously leafing through a graphic novel, Resident Evil-Code: Veronica, to pass the time. There were constant rumors that Iraqi insurgents would try to free Saddam, and he'd also been cautioned to watch out for an unbalanced soldier trying to kill the former dictator, either as an act of vigilante justice or to become famous. More nervous than he'd expected to be, Hutch reminded himself to remain vigilant. The man he had long thought of as a ferocious demon was now just a few feet away from him, snoring peacefully. "Your job is to establish that the guard has ultimate control." He knew he wasn't going to be screaming at this prisoner.Īs Hutch eased into the old metal chair outside the cell, he could see that Saddam appeared to be sleeping comfortably. "You give them that initial shock, where you stand in front of 'em, probably about an inch from their face, and scream out the rules and regulations," Hutch explained. On previous deployments at detention facilities, Hutch had been the Super 12's "screamer"-it was his job to let detainees know that no shit would be tolerated. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein visits shepherds in an undated photo from the archive of an official photographer for the regime. Those attacks killed thousands, including women and children, in excruciating fashion. This seemed to many an odd choice as the first crime to prosecute Saddam for, given the other, better-known killings for which he was responsible, most notably the chemical gas attacks against Iraqi Kurds during the Iran-Iraq War. The court had chosen to try Saddam for the killing of 148 Shiite residents of Dujail in response to a failed assassination attempt when he had visited that town in the early 1980s. ![]() war crimes tribunals while borrowing from Iraqi criminal procedure. The IHT-housed in a former Baath Party headquarters building, a hulking, pillared structure-was established by the Americans who had toppled Saddam's regime with a massive invasion. They had been ordered to maintain visual contact with him at all times to make sure he didn't harm himself or wasn't harmed by someone. The Super 12 called their own temporary lodging beneath the IHT courtroom "the Crypt." It was dark 24 hours a day because, at any given time, some of them would be sleeping, since their lives were now an endless loop of eight-hour shifts guarding Saddam. Beneath the courtroom was a row of subterranean cells-half-wall, half-plexiglass enclosed rooms that resembled the "interrogation room in a movie"-in which Saddam and several co- defendants were held when they were due in court. The two of them were in the bowels of the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT), a courthouse constructed just to try Saddam and his seven co-defendants for crimes against humanity. Hutch's first shift with his notorious prisoner began at midnight. They weren't permitted to keep a journal, all their emails were monitored, and they were subject to random searches to make sure they weren't taking notes about what they were doing, seeing, hearing or even thinking.* Hutch and the rest of his Super 12 team were ordered to not tell anyone about their mission, even their families. Just a few weeks before, he and his squad mates in the 551st Military Police Company-the Super 12-were given a top-secret mission: guard Saddam while he was tried by an Iraqi tribunal for some of the many atrocities he had committed during the two decades he ruled his country with a profligate brutality. But this time, he was half a world away from the Midnight Rodeo in central Florida, where he'd been prying apart drunk brawlers. Specialist Steve Hutchinson was, once again, working nights.
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