Saddam lawyer vows to continue trial boycott
Saddam Hussein’s chief lawyer vowed to continue boycotting his Kurdish genocide trial today to protest the removal of the trial’s first chief judge and the court’s refusal to allow defence lawyers to examine thousands of documents.
Lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said the decision was made after he met with the deposed Iraqi leader on October 2 and because of “repeated violations by the court.”
The ousted president and six others have been on trial since August 21 for the Operation Anfal crackdown on Kurdish rebels in the late 1980s. The prosecution says about 180,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
The trial, Saddam’s second, is scheduled to resume tomorrow in Baghdad after a 12-day break. The chief judge adjourned the hearing to allow the defendants time to persuade their lawyers to return to the courtroom, find new counsel or accept court-appointed lawyers.
In a sudden move last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki approved a request by the Iraqi High Tribunal, the country’s supreme court, to remove the trial’s chief Judge Abdullah al-Amiri after he angered Kurds by saying that Saddam was “not a dictator.”
He was replaced by Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, who presided over turbulent hearings in which he repeatedly threw Saddam out of court.
Al-Dulaimi cited last month’s abrupt replacement of al-Amiri as the primary reason for their boycott, which began on September 24.
“Other reasons include depriving the defendants of their right to have non-Iraqi lawyers present in the courtroom and because the court ignored a defence request for a break to study 10,000 documents presented by the prosecution,” said al-Dulaimi, an Iraqi lawyer who leads a nine-member defence team.
Al-Dulaimi said he believes the documents are forged and alleges they contain identical testimonies, photocopied on different pages that bear the names of different witnesses.
“We need time to study this very closely,” he said.
He said the defence team was also protesting a prosecution witness who took the stand last month and testified that he temporarily lost his sight in a chemical weapons attack by Saddam Hussein’s forces. Saddam’s lawyers have asked that the witness’s testimony be dismissed because he had a Dutch passport in violation of Iraqi law, which bars citizens from being dual nationals.
Al-Dulaimi also said when he met with Saddam last week, he found the former president to be in “high spirits and good health.”
He said that Saddam wants to boycott tomorrow’s scheduled hearing, but the court “will force him to attend.”
“When he’s there, he will reject any court-appointed lawyers,” al-Dulaimi added.
