ALL decent people across the world will celebrate news that Saddam Hussein has been captured.

It is fitting that an evil tyrant, so used to opulence while his people struggled for survival, should spend his last days of freedom in a squalid hole in the ground.

And it is also fitting that he will now have to face the justice denied so many of his own people.

There will be a temptation to make Saddam stand trial in an international court. Some sections of American public opinion, in particular, will see the benefits of the impact such a show trial will have on public opinion.

There is justification for an international hearing. During the Iran-Iraq War and the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam is accused of offences outside Iraqi borders.

But there is no doubt that his most heinous crimes were committed in his own country, against his own people.

For the deaths of the tens of thousands of people at the hands of his regime, he should stand trial in Iraq.

If the international community is to have confidence in the future of Iraq as a democracy, then it needs to show faith in Iraq to mete out justice to its former ruler.

The Iraqi Governing Council already has in place a process to determine cases involving members of the Ba'athist regime. That process should be extended to determine the case against Saddam.

While Saddam has been a pariah of the international community for the past decade, he has governed the people of Iraq using brute force, fear, intimidation and mass murder.

No one has a better claim to deal with him than his own people.

The United States should end the confusion right away by handing over Saddam to the Iraqi authorities, and trust in them to do what is right.

There could not be a better start for democracy in Iraq.