Saddam Hussein custody. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty. The 68 people arrested at the meeting were subsequently tried together and found guilty of treason. 22 were sentenced to execution. Other high-ranking members of the party formed the firing squad. By 1 August 1979, hundreds of high-ranking Ba'ath party members had been executed. Iraqi society fissures along lines of language, religion and ethnicity. The Ba'ath Party, secular by nature, adopted Pan-Arab ideologies which in turn were problematic for significant parts of the population. Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979,
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