Types of socialism and encourages the institution of a form of direct democracy based on popular committees. Critics charge that Qaddafi uses these committees as tools of autocratic political repression in practice. Scholars have highlighted the similarities between the Islamic economic system and socialist theory. For example, both are against unearned income. Islam does allow private ownership of natural resources and large industries, which are owned collectively, or at least encouraged to be so. The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party rules Syria (and ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein), based on a tradition of secular, non-Marxist socialism. Ba'thist beliefs combine Arab Socialism, nationalism, and Pan-Arabism.
Trial of Saddam Hussein to sign the legal document confirming his understanding of the charges. In a leaked transcript of a February 2003 meeting between Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar, Bush expressed a willingness to have Saddam tried at the International Tribunal of Justice in The Hague. In December 2004, Clive Stafford Smith prepared a 50-page brief for the defense team arguing that Saddam Hussein should be tried in the US under US criminal law. The London-based Arab-language daily newspaper "Al-Quds Al-Arabi" reported in early May 2005 that during a meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, "known only to a few Iraqi officials in