When and how to try the now-jailed former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein? Iraqi Deputy Minister of Human Rights Ali Kabi told Xinhua during an interview that he did not expect the historical trial "to be delayed for a long time." 

Most of the Iraqi Governing Council members had declared that the trial should be in Iraq and by Iraqi judges because both the victims and evidences are in Iraq, Ali said.

"Now the US has decided to send a group of lawyers to help Iraqis to prepare to try Saddam," he disclosed, adding that Iraq also had issued a law for Saddam trial, and "when the power is transferred to Iraqis, this will accelerate the efforts to try Saddam."

Ali said they had found nearly 300 mass graves across the country after the war and only 76 of them had been unearthed.

"Some of them are small, and some are very big like al-Mahaweel in Babylon Province, with more than 10,000 bodies," he told Xinhua.

"We think these graves have more than 300,000 bodies, most of whom were killed in the uprising in March 1991."

The human rights official noted that some of the mass graves were dug before 1991 and some were created weeks before Saddam was toppled.

"We will coordinate with other ministries to prevent people from digging these mass graves because they are evidence against Saddam regime," he claimed.

As to the current security situation, Ali described Iraq as an "international battleground" because several extremist organizations had reportedly transferred their bases to the war-torn country.

They could easily enter Iraq because the borders are porous, and they came to Iraq to take revenge against American troops and other Iraqi parties, he added.

"Iraq is still under disorder and everyday we hear or see new crimes or threats. But at least now we have police, and we hope that the security file will be transferred to Iraqi police and this will lead to increase of security situation," he said.

He stressed that once the new Iraqi government is in place, the compensation to war and after-war violence victims will be one of the priorities.

"Because we don't have a sovereign government now, no one gives compensation to the victims. To calculate the victims and give them some compensation will be the task of the interim government set up by June 30," he said.

According to the human rights official, a list they received from the coalition authority showed that at present there are still around 10,000 Iraqis jailed by the US army, but "we believe the number should be higher than that for a simple reason: many families came to our ministry and complained that the coalition also detained their sons or relatives."

He told Xinhua that they would open offices in the major prisons to listen to the complaints, and they will arrange Iraqi lawyers to meet the prisoners, especially those detained for a long time.

"We know that many of the prisoners are detained because of false information," he said, noting that his ministry, the first one in Iraq's history, aims mainly at building the environment and a culture that will respect the human beings and prevent harming or insulting persons.

"We will set up a survey center to learn the public opinion of Iraqi people, establish a national network to watch the human rights situation and open 120 offices all over Iraq to supervise various government offices to make sure they respect human rights," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 22, 2004)