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Saddam defiant as trial starts, stalls

Iraqi women take part in a demonstration in the village of al-Dujail yesterday to demand the death penalty for ousted leader Saddam Hussein. At least 148 men were killed by his regime in the 1982 Dujail massacre of Iraqi Shiites after a failed assassination attempt against the former leader. PHOTO: AFP

A defiant Saddam Hussein yesterday exchanged angry words with the presiding judge and heard testimony from the first prosecution witness as the trial of the former Iraqi dictator resumed after a 40-day break.

After barely two hours in session, the court was adjourned to next Monday to give time for one of Saddam's seven co-defendants to appoint his own defense lawyer.

Saddam, who faces charges including murder and torture that carry the death penalty, showed no sign of toning down the combative stance he adopted at the first hearing last month.

Iraq's one-time strongman and his co-defendants, who all pleaded not guilty to charges over a 1982 massacre of Shiites, also watched video testimony from a witness who gave evidence from a prison hospital before his death.

Dressed in a smart Western suit with a white handkerchief neatly folded into the top pocket, Saddam engaged in an angry opening skirmish with judge Rizkar Mohammed Amin over his treatment at the high-security Baghdad courthouse.

He complained he had been forced to walk the stairs into the courtroom as the lift was broken and had been put in handcuffs on the way to the court, making it hard for him to carry a copy of the Koran. He then lambasted the court for apparently confiscating his pen and paper, saying: "How can a defendant defend himself if they take even his papers and pen?"

The Kurdish Amin -- who as in the first hearing appeared unflappable in the face of Saddam's verbal jousts -- promised the paper and pen would be returned later on.

Saddam also fired off an angry tirade against the court's US guards.

"Please judge, I don't want you to tell them, order them," Saddam said. "You are Iraqi, you have sovereignty, they are in your country, they are foreigners, they are invaders."

The charges relate to the killing of 148 men and youths from the Shiite village of Dujail, north of the capital, after Saddam escaped an assassination attempt there in 1982.

The other defendants include Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and a former director of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service, and former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was one of the regime's "enforcers."

Amin said he adjourned the trial to give Ramadan time to find his own attorney after rejecting a court-appointed lawyer. The latest hearings had been expected to last four days.

The court was shown testimony from wheelchair-bound Waddah Ismail al-Sheikh, a former intelligence official, who said 400 people were detained in Dujail by troops who took their orders from Barzan. He died after the interview.

Other evidence viewed by the court included a video clip from a British television program.

Former US attorney Ramsey Clark, a left-wing activist who made several visits to Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 US invasion, was formally sworn in as one of Saddam's lawyers.
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