Iran seeks charges against Saddam

TEHRAN— Iran said yesterday it had sent its own charges against Saddam Hussein to the court trying the former Iraqi leader, including that of using chemical weapons against Iranian civilians in the Iran- Iraq war.

Justice Minister Jamal Karimirad said the petition was sent via Iran’s foreign ministry to the Baghdad court where a trial of the former Iraqi president is due to start today.

“ The plaintiff is the entire Iranian nation,” Karimirad told a news conference, adding that Iran wanted Saddam charged with invading the country in 1980, and with “ using chemical weapons, genocide, crimes against humanity . . .”

While Karimirad didn’t detail the charges, many are likely to involve Iraq’s use of nerve and mustard gas during the eightyear war, which killed more than 500,000 Iranians.

Iranian lawyers have spent months preparing a dossier against Saddam, who is to appear in court, along with seven senior members of his 23- year regime, to face charges of ordering a massacre of nearly 150 people from the mainly Shiite town of Dujail following a failed attempt on his life in 1982. But Saddam’s lawyer, Khalil alDuleimi, said he plans to ask today for a three- month adjournment to give him more time to prepare Saddam’s defence and arrange for Arab and Western lawyers to join him in the defence team. He also plans to challenge the court’s competence to try Saddam. “ We will dispute the legitimacy of the court as we’ve been doing every day . . .” said al- Duleimi, who met with Saddam for 90 minutes yesterday and found him “ very optimistic.”

If convicted, Saddam and his co-defendants could face the death penalty, but they could appeal before another chamber of the special tribunal set up to try the former leader and officials from his ousted regime.

Court officials say they’re trying Saddam on the Dujail massacre first because it was the easiest case to put together. Other cases they are investigating — including a crackdown on Kurds that killed an estimated 180,000 people — involve more witnesses and documentation.