Iraq is suffering from a severe lack of qualified judges...

Iraq is suffering from a severe lack of qualified judges, hampering its efforts to enforce the rule of law and forcing it to depend on the death penalty to deter criminals, the Iraqi human rights minister said. With only 700 judges for a population of 27 million, Iraq needs the "dissuasive effect" of capital punishment to improve security, Bakhtiar Amin said at UN offices in Geneva, where he was meeting the global body's human rights agency.
"Nobody within my government is happy about the reintroduction of the death penalty," he said, attributing its return to "the general feeling in Iraq" that "if we hang several people publicly ... then it will have an impact upon the security." "Others will not be recruited as easily to commit crimes," he added.
He said the death penalty was reintroduced in August for murder, endangering national security and drug trafficking, but would be only a temporary measure in the effort to stamp out the country's insurgency.
He declined to comment on whether the death penalty might apply in the trial of Saddam Hussein, which he said would take place sometime in 2005, probably in the first three months.
Amin confirmed that Saddam is being held at Camp Cropper near the Baghdad International Airport. He said his country had only four judges for juvenile delinquency, including one for the entire city of Baghdad. "These are certain challenges in terms of deficiencies which we have inherited from the past," he said, adding that Iraqi officials need "training, rehabilitation, and the modernization of our institutions" to improve the situation.