Saddam pleads not guilty

[DBAHO]

A DEFIANT Saddam Hussein had pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial on charges of crimes against humanity over a 1982 massacre of Shiite villagers.

 

"I said what I said, I am not guilty, I am innocent," Saddam told the court after the charges were read.

All other seven defendants also declared they were "innocent."

 

Saddam, grey-bearded and wearing a dark jacket over an open-necked shirt, hectored the chief judge as he stood in a white metal pen on the marble court floor.

 

When asked his name by the judge, Saddam, 68, refused to give his name and shot back: "You know me. You are an Iraqi and you know who I am.

 

"I won't answer to this so-called court...Who are you? What are you? The occupation is illegitimate," Saddam said. "I retain my constitutional rights as the president of Iraq."

 

 

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He was the last to enter the courtroom as proceedings began shortly after midday (1900 AEST) and asked the jailers escorting him to slow down as he walked to his spot facing the panel of five judges. He carried an old copy of the Koran.

Chief judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd, presided from a raised dais looking down on the defendants. Bronze-coloured scales of justice hung behind the judges.

 

"This is the first session of case number one, the case of Dujail," Mr Amin told the court, referring to the town where bloody reprisals followed a 1982 attempt on Saddam's life.

 

After his outburst, Saddam was told to sit down and the other defendants, including Saddam's former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan, were asked to identify themselves. They did so without protest.

 

Nearly two years after he was found hiding in a hole in the ground near where he was born, Saddam and seven other members of his now-defunct Baath Party are being tried for events stemming from a failed attempt on the former leader's life in 1982.

 

Prosecutors will try to show that Saddam, in retaliation for the botched assassination attempt, ordered his henchmen to hunt down, torture and kill scores of men from the town where the attack took place, on that day and in the years that followed.

 

The defence is expected to petition the judges for an adjournment saying it has not had enough time to prepare for the trial and arguing that the court, established during the US occupation in 2003, is illegitimate.

 

The hearing may last only a few hours if the judges accept an adjournment request.

 

Iraq's Government, led by long-time enemies of Saddam and looking for popularity ahead of elections in December, hopes the trial will boost the morale of Iraqis struggling against the hardships of the insurgency two and a half years after the war began.

 

The eyes of the world were on the trial, being televised with a 20-minute delay, not just to capture the moment that Saddam stood in the dock, but to see whether Iraq under its new leadership can fairly try its deposed dictator.

 

Security at the courtroom was extraordinarily tight.

 

If found guilty, Saddam could be hanged, and any sentence should be carried out within 30 days of appeals being exhausted. That means Saddam could be executed before being tried for other crimes such as genocide against the Kurds.

 

Khalil al-Dulaimi, Saddam's chief lawyer, said he will challenge the court's legitimacy and ask for more time to study the 800 pages of evidence collected by investigators over the past two years. The defence received them just 45 days ago.

 

He may also argue that Saddam has presidential immunity.

 

The charges stem from events that took place on July 8, 1982, when a group of young men linked to the Shi'ite Dawa Party attempted to assassinate Saddam as his armoured motorcade passed through Dujail, a town about 60km north of Baghdad.

 

Apart from the 143 men said to have been killed in reprisal, women and children are alleged to have been forcibly removed from Dujail, taken to Abu Ghraib prison and later sent to an internment camp in the desert near the border with Saudi Arabia where many ultimately "disappeared".

 

Helicopters and tanks then demolished parts of Dujail, while Saddam's soldiers laid waste to rich farmland and fruit groves, destroying the people's homes and their livelihoods.

[Texsox]

I knew he was innocent, let's just stop the trial here and save some time and money. Give him a 7-11 in Beverly and call it a day.