Saddam's team accuses witness of perjury
The chief judge threw out one of the top defendants in the Saddam Hussein trial amid fierce arguments today as the prosecution and defence accused each other’s witnesses of lying.
Court guards hustled former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim out of the courtroom after he rebuked chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman for warning a defence witness that he could be prosecuted if he were not telling the truth on the stand.
Ibrahim told Abdel-Rahman he should be more “patient”, saying: “I believe we should hear the witness and take what is useful and ignore what is not useful.”
“Every session you have a lecture,” Abdel-Rahman snapped at him, shouting at Ibrahim to sit down.
When Ibrahim argued back, Abdel-Rahman shouted: “Get him out of the court,” and three guards escorted Ibrahim away, one of them holding him by the wrist.
The disturbance came after the defence witness alleged that chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi tried to pay him to make up testimony against Saddam and his seven co-defendants in the trial.
Al-Moussawi accused the defence of coaching the witness in “fabricated” testimony.
The defence has launched a stepped-up attack on the prosecution’s case, alleging that one of its witnesses committed perjury and calling for all the prosecution witnesses to be reviewed.
