Saddam: Insurgents will 'drive out foreigners'
Gunmen killed the brother of the chief prosecutor in Saddam Hussein’s Kurdish genocide trial today, even as the ex-president called in an open letter for insurgents to forgive their American enemies and for Iraqis to forgive each other and stop sectarian killings.
In the letter, Saddam declared Iraq’s “liberation is at hand” – an apparent effort to cast himself as a statesman as Iraq plunges further into civil war and the United States weighs what to do next.
Many Iraqis have come to believe that the United States has decided to begin pulling out of Iraq, despite US president George Bush’s denials.
“The hour of liberation is at hand, God willing. But remember that your near-term goal is confined to freeing your country from the forces of occupation and their followers, and not to be preoccupied in settling scores,” Saddam wrote in the Arabic-language letter, which he dictated to his lawyers over the weekend. They released it today.
He signed it as the “President and commander in chief of the holy warrior armed forces".
Saddam said he was addressing Iraqis in a letter because “my chances to express my opinion are limited” in detention.
Court officials also said today the verdict and sentence in Saddam’s first trial, for killing nearly 150 Shiites in Dujail in 1982, will be handed down on November 5. Many fear that verdict and sentence – which could likely be death - will further inflame tensions across Iraq.
The murder of the brother of the top prosecutor in the second trial, Imad al-Faroon, merely added to the fears of sectarian violence. Al-Farronas was shot dead in front of his wife at his home in Baghdad.
Al-Faroon’s brother is chief prosecutor Muqith al-Faroon, who is leading the Saddam prosecution on charges of crimes against humanity in his alleged killing of thousands of Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war.
There was no immediate word from law enforcement authorities about the killing or who might have conducted the assassination. Imad al-Faroon worked as a legal adviser to Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who returned to a prominent position in the early days after the US-led invasion toppled Saddam.
Al-Faroon’s killing adds to the troubles surrounding legal proceedings against Saddam, who is being tried simultaneously in two cases in which he faces charges of crimes against humanity and genocide and can face death by hanging if convicted in either. A hearing in the Kurdish case was to resume Tuesday.
In his letter, Saddam urged Iraq’s majority Shiite population and its Sunni minority – the backbone of the insurgency – to set aside their differences and focus instead on driving the US forces out of Iraq.
“It was only a few times that I managed to address you through the farcical, so-called trial when the microphones were not switched off,” Saddam said.
The judges in Saddam’s two trials have repeatedly censured him, occasionally expelling him from the courtroom, for contempt of court and making political statements.
Khalil al-Dulaimi, Saddam’s chief lawyer, said the deposed leader dictated the letter during a four-hour meeting in a Baghdad detention centre on Saturday. Al-Dulaimi typed the letter on Sunday.
Al-Dulaimi said that during the meeting, they discussed Saddam’s trials. In the one, he is charged with killing of 148 Shiites from the town of Dujail in the 1980s, and in the other he is charged with genocide against the Kurds during a military offensive in 1987-88, code-named Operation Anfal.
The lawyer declined to be more specific about the talks, which were attended by Saddam’s other lawyers, including former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark.
Iraqis are “living the most difficult period in history because of the occupation, killing, destruction and looting,” Saddam wrote.
Responding to fears that Iraq is on the brink of breaking apart, Saddam said that he yearned for a “great unified Iraq, which is not split by any colour, segment or allegation".
He expressed pain over the extent of the fighting between Shiites and Sunnis. “My heart fails me,” he said, referring to what he regards as the foreigners’ success in “sowing divisions among us".
He urged Sunnis to forgive their Iraqi opponents, and to forgive those who tracked down his two sons – Odai and Qussai – who were killed in a battle with American soldiers in the northern city of Mosul in 2003.
“You must show genuine forgiveness and put aside revenge over the spilled blood of your sons and brothers, including the sons of Saddam Hussein,” he wrote in the letter.
He also urged the insurgents to chose their targets carefully and warned that by employing excessive force, the insurgents stand to alienate public opinion.
