It has already been called Baghdad’s 'second Green Zone”: a fortified complex of 5,000 square meters to shelter judges, policemen, witnesses and defendants. A fortress within the fortress, the Rule of Law Complex is a heavily protected legal enclave that, according to its inventors, General David H. Petraeus, top U.S. commander and Ryan C. Crocker, American ambassador to Iraq, will serve as the umpteenth protected zone in Baghdad, a guarded island where the “most dangerous terrorists” will have to face trial. According to its inventors, the fortified compound of Iraq’s new legal system, which cost $400 million, is necessary to ensure the physical protection of judges and that trials are regularly carried out. But what’s the price? “To live in Baghdad and not being able to see it for three months,” as revealed in the Washington Post’s reportage about the complex by a judge who lives in the “second Green Zone” with his wife and children.

A 'success'? Since its beginning, with 43 suspects being prosecuted in one month and a half of activity, the 'Rule of Law Complex' highlights how, despite its name, guarded walls and barbed wire are not enough to tackle Iraq’s major issue in the post-Saddam era: the reconstruction of a real rule of law. Dozens of judges have been killed by sectarian violence. Iraq’s legal system derives its methods and shape from a too complex political structure and in order to apply justice impartially foreign jurists’ advice and technical assistance are not enough. Even after Saddam’s revolutionary courts have been dismantled, Iraq’s judges still have to face political, ethnic and tribal pressures that do not allow to use the word 'success', as the US command repeats with reference to the reconstruction of Iraq’s judicial system.

Impartiality. The United States provide the complex with criminal investigators, lawyers and a paralegal staff. About twenty investigators are directly trained by the F.B.I. personnel. Nevertheless, people who are familiar with the American trial system, are quite puzzled by the extreme brevity of trials. Basically the system is based on confessions and on witnesses, while forensic investigations are almost an exception. One of the trials held in the complex was that of Abu Qatada, a Syrian militant accused of terrorism, kidnapping and killing his hostages. Charges were almost entirely based on testimony against him.

Witnesses were taken to the complex’s courtroom through special entrances. Their declarations were entered in a file that only the judges were allowed to read.

The evidence against him, almost exclusively testimonial, led the Court, which was made up of three judges, one Sunni and two Shiites, to a 30-year sentence for possessing weapons and attacking the State. The judges of the complex are chosen by the Interior Ministry, a ministry that has often been accused of being sectarian. There are also surreal aspects, as shown in the case of a Shiite inspector of the Complex who was put under investigation by the Interior Ministry after he expressed his intention to marry a Sunni woman. “What kind of investigation is that?” he said with undisguised contempt to a Washington Post’s journalist.