Saddam goes on hunger strike
After shouts, insults, arguments and walkouts, Saddam Hussein and three of his co-defendants unveiled a new show-stealing tactic: hunger strikes.
Saddam said the strike was called to protest the tough way chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman has conducted the court since he took over last month.
“For three days we have been holding a hunger strike protesting against your way of treating us – against you and your masters,” the former Iraqi leader said yesterday.
Abdel-Rahman has tried to impose order in a court, where outbursts and abuse, mostly by Saddam and his former intelligence chief and half brother Barzan Ibrahim, have often overshadowed the proceedings.
The disruptions led to criticism of Abdel-Rahman’s predecessor, fellow Kurd Rizgar Mohammed Amin, for not doing enough to rein in the brothers.
But after a short period of shouting and verbal abuse at the start of yesterday’s session, the court was calm as prosecutors tried for a second consecutive day to build their case of the ousted president’s direct role in the executions and imprisonment of hundreds of Shiites in the 1980s.
A key document presented to the court allegedly showed that Saddam approved rewards for intelligence agents involved in the crackdown against residents of Dujail, a mainly Shiite town north of Baghdad, following a 1982 assassination attempt against him there.
If convicted in the killing of nearly 150 Shiites from Dujail, Saddam and his seven co-defendants could face death by hanging.
Ibrahim spoke at length, denying he had any part in the crackdown and insisting he personally released detainees.
He spoke from the defendants’ pen, again wearing only his pyjamas in protest at being forced to attend the trial. But his orderly arguments represented the first time any of the defendants have dealt at length with the charges they face, and his participation could boost the legitimacy of a tribunal whose fairness some have questioned.
Yesterday, the prosecution put on the stand three former members of Saddam’s regime – a former secretary of Saddam’s, a former provincial governor and an anonymous intelligence official.
It also displayed to the court a document dated July 21, 1982 – 13 days after the assassination attempt – in which the Mukhabarat, the intelligence agency headed by Ibrahim at the time, recommended rewards for six employees for their role in the arrests.
The document bore a signature that the prosecution said was Ibrahim’s. Below it was written the word “agreed” with what was allegedly Saddam’s signature.
On the witness stand, Hamed Youssef Hamadi – Saddam’s secretary at the time - was asked whose handwriting was on the memo. “It looks like President Saddam’s,” he said.
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