The extensive forensic investigations preceding the Soham trial and the jury's protracted deliberations about a seemingly "open and shut" case, remind us that justice has to be meticulous and even-handed. Lynch law and kangaroo courts are ultimately unsatisfying to those whose lives are torn apart by a criminal outrage.

The centuries have given us procedural maps for the navigation of domestic law. However, bringing the recently-captured Saddam Hussein to justice takes us into little explored territory. It is therefore vital to set the right precedent.

Human Rights Watch has been gathering evidence against Saddam for years. Violations of International Humanitarian Law for which he could be put on trial include:

• 100,000 Kurdish men and boys machine-gunned during 1998;

• the Anfal genocide, much of it involving the use of chemical weapons;

• the use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war;

• the 30,000 Shiites and Kurds slaughtered in 1991;

• other Shiites killed during the 1980's because of their perceived sympathy for Iran;

• Marsh Arabs killed as the Iraqi government drained the marshes and destroyed a culture that had thrived for centuries;

• many individual Iraqis of all faiths and ethnicities who were singled out, and their lives ended, for real or perceived opposition to the regime.

Like the Soham case, Saddam's trial will need painstaking preparation - but on a massive scale. Kenneth Roth (International Herald Tribune,15 December) said "As we know from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, prosecutions of genocide or crimes against humanity can be enormously complex, demanding jurists of exceptional skill and sophistication. They require amassing volumes of official documents, collecting sensitive forensic evidence from mass graves, presenting hundreds of witnesses from among victims and accomplices, and paying scrupulous attention to the requirements of due process".

• Human Rights Watch argues that the Iraqi judiciary, weakened and compromised by decades of Ba'ath party rule, lacks the capacity, experience, and independence to provide fair trials for the abuses of the past;

• the Governing Council is seen by many as a tool of the Coalition forces which invaded the country illegally;

• considerable international assistance would be needed to collect and analyse the mass of documentary and forensic evidence.

Neither can he be tried for for his unprovoked invasion of Iran - a crime against peace. The crime of Aggression is yet to be defined by the ICC.

However, there could be a mixed court comprising international and Iraqi judges, modelled on the special court for Sierra Leone, established by a UN resolution in 2000.

Such an international tribunal would, according t o Kenneth Roth, " be more likely to be seen as legitimate. And because it can draw from a global pool of talent, it would be better able to secure the experienced and fair-minded jurists than a court that must look only to Iraqis" .