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Experts confirm that Saddam signed death warrants

Handwriting experts confirmed former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's signatures were on two key documents in his trial -- one approving death sentences for 148 Shiites, the other ordering confiscation of farmlands during a crackdown in the 1980s, the judge said on Wednesday.

Dressed in his black suit, Saddam was unusually silent throughout the three-hour session. But his half-brother and co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim angrily rejected the experts' report as biased.

Defense lawyers demanded a neutral, international panel of experts be formed to look at numerous documents presented by the prosecution that were allegedly signed by Saddam or the other seven defendants.

Saddam and the former officials from his regime are on trial for the deaths of the 148 Shiites and the imprisonment of hundreds of others in a crackdown launched following an assassination attempt against Saddam in the mainly Shiite town of Dujail in 1982.

Prosecutors have aimed to use the documents to show Saddam, Ibrahim and the others were closely involved in the crackdown against Dujail's residents.

The former Iraqi leader has refused to confirm or deny the signatures are his -- and Ibrahim and some other defendants outright called the documents forgeries. Saddam and Ibrahim refused to give handwriting samples, so the team of experts relied on comparisons with other documents signed by the men unrelated to the Dujail case.

In Wednesday's session, chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman read the report from the experts saying that the signatures on two memos, dated Oct. 10, 1982 and June 16, 1984, "matched the signatures of Saddam Hussein."

The 1984 memo approves the death sentences against the 148, issued by Saddam's Revolutionary Court two days earlier. The 1982 document orders that farmlands that were taken from Dujail families in retaliation for the assassination attempt be handed over to the Agriculture Ministry.

Abdel-Rahman adjourned the trial until April 24 to allow experts to look at more documents.

On Monday, the experts said they had authenticated Saddam's signature on a 1982 memo approving rewards for six intelligence agents involved in the crackdown. They also said signatures on other documents were those of Ibrahim, the former head of the Mukhabarat intelligence agency.

The authentications may verify Saddam signed off on the executions and confiscations, but on their own they're far from sealing the case against him.
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