Iraqi ruling council takes over / LAW, ORDER: 2 Bay... -
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Last Visited: 7/14/2003
Former Marin County Judge Alvin Goldstein and Barry Portman, a federal public defender in San Francisco, arrived in the war-scarred country in May as part of a team of U.S. legal advisers.
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Goldstein, 75, of San Rafael, and Novato resident Portman first joined the other judges, lawyers and court administrators for field training at Fort Bliss Army post in Texas.Upon arrival in Iraq, the team split up, its members meeting with judges and lawyers in different cities.
The Iraqis were used to a legal system far different from America's.
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"This system was nurtured by torture, secrecy, disappearances, cruelty and arbitrary extra-legal actions by Saddam Hussein, who ruled by edict and was capable of killing a judge who resisted his whims," said Goldstein in an e- mail from Baghdad.
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In Mosul, Goldstein found judges showing up regularly for work, but few actually working.Asked if their courts were open, most still said yes.
They made a lasting impression on Goldstein, a veteran lawyer and judge who now serves as a principal at Goldstein & Musto.Despite blast-furnace temperatures, the judges and lawyers he met in Baghdad and the north still insisted on wearing the business attire appropriate for their stations.
"With their collapsed infrastructure and all the rubble from years of neglect, it made quite a contrast," Goldstein said.