Clark: Saddam is in good spirits
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark said today he met with deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein yesterday and found him in “very good spirits”.
Clark said as he was having lunch in Baghdad yesterday, having attended Saddam’s resumed trial, and was told that he could meet the toppled president.
The Carter Administration attorney general said he was left along with Saddam for a while, before two soldiers joined them for the remainder of the session, which lasted about an hour.
Clark declined to say who offered the meeting with Saddam, nor would he give any further details about where they met and the nature of the surroundings.
Clark said Saddam “has been in total isolation. He hasn’t seen a member of his family, talked to a member of his family, met with a lawyer or met with friends he has known before.”
The New York Times today published a transcript of a discussion between Saddam and his lead lawyer that was inadvertently heard through microphones left open during the lunch break yesterday.
Saddam was heard to suggest he had discouraged visits by his family because he didn’t want to put relatives through the ordeal.
The translator’s notes of the conversation showed that Saddam mentioned something about “the women could be crying if they had to endure the circumstances of visiting him”.
Saddam was in “extremely good spirits to see people he knew that he could talk to that he hadn’t seen in a couple of years”, said Clark, who said he last saw the former Iraqi strongman in February 2003, shortly before the US-led invasion.
“His mind was as clear and as sharp as ever,” Clark said at Amman airport in Jordan on arrival from Baghdad.
Issam Ghazawi, a Jordanian lawyer who serves as an adviser to Saddam’s Iraqi defence team, said he, former Qatari Justice Minister Najib al-Nueimi, and Saddam’s chief Iraqi lawyer Khalil Dulaimi also joined Clark and Saddam.
“The main issues discussed pertained to the legal aspect of the case and the violations of the rights of our client committed by the American and Iraqi sides,” he said. He declined to elaborate.
Clark said yesterday’s proceeding was not a trial, but a hearing. “It was a wasted day” in a process that, Clark said, would not produce a fair trial.
“This case presents as great a challenge of the possibility of a fair trial as any you’re likely to see because the emotions are so intense,” Clark said.
“The violence is ever present and widespread, people so desperate. The power, the political interests in it, the omnipresent of the US behind every door, plus soldiers on the streets. There are real questions whether you can have a real trial.”
Clark, who also serves as an adviser to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi lawyers, said he would argue in a December 5 hearing that the tribunal is not a legal forum for the trial.
He also said he would ask the judicial authorities to provide more security for lawyers defending Saddam after the recent killings of two Iraqi lawyers.
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