Saddam meets lawyer as henchmen face trial
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein met a defence lawyer for the first time since his capture a year ago, days before several of his top aides are due to appear in court for war crimes hearings.
The unidentified lawyer spent four hours yesterday with the 67-year-old ousted leader at Saddam’s secret detention site, said his chief lawyer, Ziad al-Khasawneh.
“He was in good health and his morale was high and very strong,” al-Khasawneh said. “He looked much better that his earlier public appearance when he was arraigned a few months ago.”
The Iraqi interim government’s push to get the trials for Saddam’s former lieutenants under way before the January 30 national elections has led to dissent even within the Iraqi Cabinet.
“Trials as symbolic as those against the dignitaries of the former regime should only start after the establishment of an Iraqi government with ballot-box legitimacy,” Iraqi justice minister Malik Dohan al-Hassan told the Geneva daily newspaper Le Temps.
Interim prime minister Iyad Allawi said on Tuesday that procedures could begin as early as next week before the Iraqi Special Tribunal.
Saddam will not be among the first to appear in court. But his notorious former right-hand man, Ali Hassan al-Majid – the ex-general known as “Chemical Ali” for his use of chemical weapons – is expected to appear along with 11 other former regime members at the initial investigative court hearing next week.
“The cases against his (Saddam’s) henchmen are probably less complicated to prove than the cases against him,” Stephen Orlofsky, a former US federal judge who toured Iraq to assess its judiciary, told CNN.
“There are probably fewer crimes and the evidence may be stronger and I’m sure the prosecution is hopeful that one or more of them will ultimately co-operate and testify against Saddam.”
Orlofsky said Saddam would face a special tribunal of five judges created to try war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
In Baghdad, a US military official familiar with the case confirmed Saddam was visited by a lawyer for the first time since being hauled from his “spider hole” on a farm near his home town of Tikrit on December 13 last year.
