Saddam's lawyers end month-long boycott of trial
Saddam Hussein’s defence lawyers ended their month-long boycott of his Baghdad trial, attending proceedings today even though the judge rejected their demands that he step down.
Saddam and his seven co-defendants entered the court and took their seats silently – a rarity since the former Iraqi leader and his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim have shouted slogans or argued with the judge at the start of almost every previous session.
Chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman opened the session by announcing that the five-judge panel had rejected a defence request that Abdel-Rahman and the chief prosecutor be removed from the trial.
Saddam’s chief lawyer Khaled al-Dulaimi said he would appeal and asked that today’s session be halted immediately, a request Abdel-Rahman refused. Al-Dulaimi and his colleague Khamis al-Obeidi left the court to prepare an appeal, but the remaining six members of the defence team remained.
The defence walkout had threatened the perception of fairness in the tribunal, a key issue in a trial that Iraqi and US officials would be a landmark in political progress for a country sharply torn between Sunnis and Shiites.
The defence stormed out of court on January 29 after Abdel-Rahman removed one of the lawyers for shouting. The defence then said it would boycott the trial unless Abdel-Rahman were removed, accusing him of bias against Saddam. Court-appointed lawyers sat in during sessions over the past month.
Their return appeared to vindicate the tough approach Abdel-Rahman has taken since he took over the trial in early January, replacing a previous chief judge who had been criticised as too lenient toward Saddam and Ibrahim’s frequent outbursts.
Abdel-Rahman, in contrast, did not hesitate to throw out defendants who shouted in the courtroom – and even proceeded with the trial in several sessions in January that the eight defendants refused to attend.
Saddam, Ibrahim and the other defendants were forced to attend the past two sessions. Ibrahim attended wearing only his long underwear in protest, and Saddam, Ibrahim and two other defendants announced at the last session, on February 14., that they had launched a hunger strike.
On Sunday Al-Obeidi said the hunger strike was over.
Asked why the defence team decided to return even though Abdel-Rahman was still in his post, al-Obeidi said Sunday that they have filed earlier an official request concerning the judge.
“We are not against the judge as a person. He is an Iraqi citizen and we respect all Iraqis,” al-Obeidi said. “Our problem is with the judge’s behaviour. Things will change when he changes his behaviour.”
The court also rejected a defence motion asking for the postponement of today’s session because of a wave of sectarian violence the past week sparked by the bombing of a holy Shiite shrine in the central city of Samarra. The violence has left more than 200 people dead, and dozens of mosques, mainly Sunni, have been attacked.
Saddam and seven co-defendants have been on trial since October 19 in the killing of nearly 150 people from the town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam there. They face death by hanging if convicted.
Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said today’s session will include reading the testimony of six witnesses and presenting more documentary evidence.
In the last two sessions, prosecutors began presenting documents they say directly link Saddam to the wave of arrests and executions launched in Dujail following the attempt on his life.
The court has heard 26 prosecution witnesses, mostly recounting their imprisonment and torture at the intelligence service headquarters in Baghdad, Abu Ghraib prison and a desert detention camp near the Saudi border.
None linked Saddam directly to their ordeal, but some witnesses identified Ibrahim -the head of the intelligence services at the time – as having personally taken part in their torture.
Another defendant, former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, was linked by witnesses to the destruction of Dujail’s orchards and farm fields.
| Related Stories: |
|
