MUCH LIKE Iraq’s “purple finger” election in January, a trial will begin in October that could help change the lens through which Arabs see their world. For the first time, an Arab despot, Saddam Hussein, will be tried by his own people. The trial will be beamed by satellite into millions of Arab homes and around the globe. It will afford a peek into the depths of human evil and, embarrassingly, if incidentally, into the concurrent indifference of Western nations to Iraqi suffering. Thus far, the accountability of Nuremberg, the Hague, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone has eluded Arab-Muslim leaders. This is about to change.

Iraq’s “trial of the century” will actually be broken up into 12 to 14 separate trials, each built around a specific crime, rather than a specific defendant. Every regime official implicated in each crime will be tried at the same time. This is the inverse of what Americans are accustomed to in our legal system, where suspected criminals are tried separately.