After more than thirty-five years of Ba‘thist rule, Saddam Hussein and a number of other former Iraqi government officials responsible for perpetrating the most heinous crimes under international law—crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes—are about to be tried for their alleged crimes. This is the moment that Iraqis across the country, as well as many living abroad, have been waiting for and never thought they would see.

For far too many victims, it is of course too late. For other victims and family members, the trials will be the only formal recognition and acknowledgement they are likely to get of the grave injustices and loss that they suffered. The sheer scale of the crimes perpetrated by the Ba‘th government is unimaginable: there are too many mass graves and too many killed or “disappeared” to ever entertain the hope that each and every victim will be accounted for. Those for whom the fate of their “disappeared” loved ones will never be resolved will be looking to the trials of the alleged perpetrators for justice and for closure.

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