The capture of Saddam Hussein by American forces has put a spring in the step of Hamid Faraj Hafof, a wiry figure of 54. His eyes gleamed with excitement last week as he mused about the most fitting punishment for the former Iraqi dictator.

Hafof has a personal grudge against Saddam: “He pulled my teeth out with pliers,” he said. “His guards smashed my wrists to pieces with a club.”

His tale may not rank that highly on the scale of barbarity associated with a despot also accused of genocide and abominable war crimes but the countless victims of electric shock, acid baths and other horrific torture were clamouring last week for their say in the tyrant’s trial.

“We have thousands of members,” said Hafof, whose Iraqi Political Prisoners’ League has been building a weighty dossier of abuses to present to the court that will eventually try Saddam.

Plans for the trial raise difficult questions, however, about justice, revenge and how to address a grand canyon of grievances created by Saddam’s ghoulish regime. A “special tribunal” has already been set up for dealing with him and his henchmen but Iraqis and international observers are divided on how best to proceed.

In a country not generally associated with the concept of due process, many Iraqis believe the dictator should be executed without further ado. Heated debate on the subject is bubbling up all over the country.

“They should hang him, of course,” mused Mahmoud al-Khafaji, a retired agronomist twiddling his worry beads in an office in Baghdad. Overhearing this, one of his colleagues chipped in: “No! They should hang him a hundred thousand times.”

In all the excitement and emotion generated by the dictator’s capture on December 13, more thoughtful strategies for bringing him to justice are also being devised. “We’re dealing with the most important event in the modern history of Iraq,” said Ali Abdul Amir, a member of one of the Iraqi political parties represented in the governing council. “If we are thinking seriously about building a new Iraq, we must start in the right way. To end this awful, dramatic era, we must begin with the rule of law.”

It will not be easy. One of the questions legal experts were pondering last week was how to impose civilised standards guaranteeing a fair trial in a country where swift and bloody retribution has been the benchmark for decades, if not centuries.

There are few Iraqis who can claim not to have suffered in some way from the terror that extended into every aspect of their lives and recruiting unbiased judges will be as difficult, as one Iraqi expert put it, as “finding a date palm in Greenland”.

Already one of Saddam’s exiled daughters has called for an international tribunal to try her father on the basis that he would not receive a fair hearing by his former subjects. Her appeal was taken up last week by Badie Arief Izzat, a friend of the family who might end up helping to defend the ousted dictator.

“Bush has already said Saddam is guilty,” said Izzat, peering into a tropical aquarium on the edge of his desk. “The leaders here have said he is guilty. Under these circumstances is it possible for him to have a fair trial? The process is already tarnished.”

Izzat brandished a piece of paper to explain his nervous demeanour. “It’s a death threat,” he said. “They will shoot me just like that animal,” he added, gesturing towards a zebra skin pinned on the wall of his office.

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