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| World Home » Current Affairs » | Sat. Nov 22, 2008 |
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Hussein Argues with Judge on his Murder Trial in Baghdad MIL/Agencies, Nov 28, 2005. As per Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net the Hussein, 68, and seven former members of his Baath Party regime face the death penalty if convicted on charges of crimes against humanity. The counts include murder, forced expulsion, imprisonment, torture and breaking international law, in connection with the killing of 148 villagers in Dujail. The defendants pleaded innocent when the trial began Oct. 19. The case was then adjourned for six weeks. As per New York Times, the Police in Northern Iraq claimed that they arrested 10 Sunni Arab persons carrying orders from a fugitive associate of Mr. Hussein to assassinate the court's best-known judge. According to the Prosecutors, they planned to bring their first witnesses against Mr. Hussein and other defendants when the court resumes in Baghdad on Monday after a six-week recess. Defense lawyers said that they would demand a new 45-day adjournment while the court considers motions to annul the proceedings on the ground that the American role in creating the court, formally known as the Iraqi High Tribunal, has voided its authority under Iraqi and international law. The police commander in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, Gen. Sarhad Qader, said the 10 men seized there in two predawn raids on insurgent safe houses on Sunday were being questioned in connection with a bomb plot to kill Raid Juhi, the chief investigative judge of the court that is trying Mr. Hussein. General Qader said the men were caught with a document containing orders to carry out the killing from Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Mr. Hussein's former vice president and the last of his inner circle of associates to have evaded capture or death. The allegation against Mr. Ibrahim came two weeks after an apparently false report that he had died appeared on a Web site operated by loyalists of Mr. Hussein's banned Baath Party. The American military command said it was treating the report as disinformation, and even the Baath Web site later withdrew it. American commanders have identified Mr. Ibrahim, 63, as perhaps the major leader of the insurgency's Baathist wing, and an architect of the alliance it has struck with Islamic militants who have carried out many of the war's bloodiest attacks.
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