Against the backdrop of the U.S. military presence in Iraq and the ongoing insurgency, Saddam Hussein, together with several of his leading associates, is finally being brought before an Iraqi court to face charges of waging war and committing crimes against humanity during the years of his regime.

For the first time, an Arab despot, no longer immune from punishment, is being tried by his own people. Conducted by the Iraq Special Tribunal, the trial has been broken into segments built around specific crimes.

(The trial began Wednesday, with Saddam denying guilt and verbally sparring with the judges, and after three hours, adjourned until Nov. 28.)

The indictment is long and includes such charges as the killing and expulsion of Kurds, the killing of Shiites, the use of chemical weapons and the execution of political adversaries, as well as the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

For the first segment of the trial, the prosecution chose a specific and limited case: the 1982 massacre in the village of Dujail, where Saddam avenged an attempt on his life by razing the village and executing 148 individuals in an act of collective punishment. The prosecution chose a small and airtight case with strong forensic evidence and witnesses ahead of the larger and more complex charges in order to establish a strategy and a basis for the trial's procedure.

Perhaps the intent by the prosecution was also to let Saddam exhaust his tirades in the dock before the larger cases are tried.

Some legal authorities would have preferred that Saddam be tried before an international court, as was the case at Nuremberg at the end of World War II and at the Hague courts dealing with Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The newly established permanent International Criminal Court, opposed by the United States, lacks jurisdiction for crimes committed before 2002.

Furthermore, the court will not try cases where a functioning legal jurisdiction exists in the nation of the perpetrator.

The argument in support of a tribunal composed of Iraqi judges is based on the principle that justice is best served if meted out by the people directly affected, giving the new Iraqi government after Saddam's overthrow a sense of "ownership" of the process of justice through law.

There is also value in placing Baghdad as the trial's venue, close to where the crimes occurred and accessible to the victimized.

No doubt this trial will be seen by many around the globe, and especially in the Middle East, as "victor's justice," as was true of the way many perceived the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II.

The response to that accusation is evident: Can civilized society ignore acts of aggression and massive crimes against humanity? Can victims be denied the process of law in bringing perpetrators to justice?

The trial is taking place amid an unstable atmosphere in Iraq, with daily attacks by insurgents, with Shiites and Sunnis pitted against each other, and with the U.S. military presence resented throughout the region and beyond.

Saddam's defense strategy will no doubt exploit this political climate to the hilt and invoke the "you, also" defense when responding to charges of razing villages and executions.

The rhetoric may well follow this line: "If civilian casualties are acceptable collateral damage for U.S. troops in their efforts to stamp out insurgency, why not for Saddam, facing the same type of threat when he faced opposition?"

Saddam's lawyers will also argue that the Iraqi tribunal is not legitimate because it derives from an invasion of Iraq that was illegal in the first place.

The "you, also" defense was raised by the Nuremberg defendants 60 years ago; it is also a defense former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has raised at his trial before the Yugoslavia Tribunal in the Hague, and it is almost always raised by former leaders accused of war crimes.

Courts have consistently dismissed this defense as invalid, because the only pertinent question goes to the guilt or innocence of the defendants, and not whether opposing leaders may have also violated international law or committed war crimes.

There are both parallels and fundamental differences between the Nuremberg and Baghdad trials.

In both cases, the trials represent a dividing mark between the dictatorial past of both nations and the beginnings of a new government based on democratic principles. In both cases, the trials are conducted during a period of military occupation.

The Nuremberg trials were convened under the heading of an International Military Tribunal, with the judges and prosecutors represented by the World War II allies — Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union.

A German court was not an option in 1945, when the German infrastructure was destroyed at the end of the war and when a trial conducted by German judges would have lacked credibility, both within Germany and abroad.

To be sure, the credibility of the Baghdad court will also be questioned, but Iraq at present, unlike Germany in 1945, features a large indigenous population that was oppressed by Saddam's regime.

The Nuremberg trials, with a detailed record of aggression and human-rights abuses during the Nazi period, represented a catharsis for Germany and allowed it to repudiate its past and start anew.

What will be the impact of the Baghdad trial? The world will be watching, and the stakes are high.

A skillful and sensitive conduct of the trial, respecting sound legal procedures, would contribute to the writing of the record of Saddam's regime, and hopefully provide an essential step toward reconciliation and harmony in Iraq.

Siegfried Ramler, a senior adjunct fellow at the East-West Center, served on the staff of the International Military Tribunal from 1945 to 1949. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.