Person of the Week: Greg Kehoe

March 4, 2005 — -- Greg Kehoe is an American lawyer who for the past year has advised the special tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein and members of his former regime. They are charged with, among other things, genocide and crimes against humanity.

"Democracy cannot take hold in any country without the establishment of the rule of law and an emergence in the faith of the court system," Kehoe said. "I don't think I've ever been in a situation where that was such an important ingredient to the peace and stability of a society, but it is."

Building a credible justice system in a war zone is an enormous undertaking. Iraq is an occupied country with an interim government. While Saddam was in power, the judicial system was deeply corrupted.

"For decades there have been secret courts where people were spirited out in the middle of the night without counsel, without due process, and executed and tortured and sent to prisons throughout this country," Kehoe said. "No one ever knew what happened to them."

Kehoe is a prosecutor by training. As Iraqis grow closer to trying their own citizens, Kehoe and his team provide the international expertise for a complex procedure in what was a chronically dysfunctional system.

"It's crucial that the Iraqi people see that this is an honest, fair proceeding and that these individuals, should they be convicted, should be convicted on the evidence that is presented in the court of law," he said.

The Iraqi tribunal has 49 Iraqi judges and prosecutors. Finding the evidence that connects individuals at the top of the government to various atrocities is a painstaking process. Kehoe and his team must get deep into the details without it appearing to be an American process.

Gathering the evidence has served as a public reminder of the cruelty that was once widespread. There are many mass grave sites.

"I've never seen anything like this," said Kehoe, while visiting a grave site. "I've never seen women and children executed, defenseless people executed in this fashion. I mean, look at a woman holding a 2-year-old child with a gunshot wound to the back of the head. I can't find any reason that would justify that."