Trial of Saddam Hussein under their joint chairmanship, of an international Emergency Committee for Iraq, with a main objective of ensuring fair trials for Saddam and the other former Ba'ath Party officials being tried with him. On 18 July 2005, Saddam was charged by the Special Tribunal with the first of an expected series of charges, relating to the mass killings of the inhabitants of the village of Dujail in 1982 after a failed assassination attempt against him. On 8 August 2005, Saddam's family announced that they had dissolved the Jordan-based legal team and that they had appointed Khalil al-Duleimi, the only Iraq-based member,
Saddam Hussein the Arab world. John Esposito, however, claims that "Arabs and Muslims were pulled in two directions. That they rallied not so much to Saddam Hussein as to the bipolar nature of the confrontation (the West versus the Arab Muslim world) and the issues that Saddam proclaimed: Arab unity, self-sufficiency, and social justice." As a result, Saddam Hussein appealed to many people for the same reasons that attracted more and more followers to Islamic revivalism and also for the same reasons that fueled anti-Western feelings. As one U.S. Muslim observer noted: "People forgot about Saddam's record and concentrated on America ...