Saddam’s trial resumes today
Reconvenes after 5weeks under heavy security Police say they foiled weekend plot to kill judge
BAGHDAD— With the trial of Saddam Hussein set to begin in earnest today under extraordinary security, police said yesterday that they had foiled a plot to kill the chief investigating judge in the case. The proceedings against Saddam, which started Oct. 19 and were suspended the same day, will go forward amid daily reminders of the turmoil that has followed his removal. Four aid workers, including two Canadians, have been kidnapped, officials in Ottawa announced yesterday.
Police in the northern city of Kirkuk said they had arrested 10 men who had prepared car bombs and had written instructions from a former top deputy to Saddam to kill the judge who led the preparation of charges against the former dictator. The arrests were made Saturday in a predawn raid on a house near Kirkuk. Plainclothes policemen who stormed the house found a link between Saddam’s former security apparatus — the arrested men were identified as agents in the former government — and Al Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, according to police Col. Anwar Qader Mohammed in Kirkuk. One of the arrested men was the son of a Zarqawi deputy. Among literature and instructions from Zarqawi’s group, Mohammed said, police also found a letter and statements apparently prepared by Izzat Ibrahim Douri, Saddam’s former vice president.
Ibrahim is said to be leading resistance to Iraq’s new government by Saddam loyalists. He ordered the group to kill the trial’s chief investigating judge, Raeed Juhi, according to Mohammed. The group also planned to set off bombs at crowded traffic circles in Kirkuk to distract from the opening of the trial, according to Mohammed.
Today, Saddam and seven codefendants were scheduled to be brought to a secret courtroom inside the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad to hear the first testimony against them five weeks after their initial appearances in court. They are charged with ordering the executions of 148 men from the Shiite town of Dujail, where Saddam’s motorcade came under fire from a grove of trees near the town in 1982. The trial has been jeopardized by threats and attacks. Two attorneys for Saddam’s co- defendants have been killed in two separate attacks and another lawyer fled Iraq for his safety. The defence attorneys agreed to resume work only after the U. S. and Iraqi governments promised to increase security around them. Former U. S. attorney general Ramsey Clark and Najeeb Nauimi, a former justice minister of Qatar, announced yesterday that they were going to Baghdad to help in the defence of Saddam.
“ A fair trial in this case is absolutely imperative for historical truth,” Clark, 77, told the Reuters news agency in Amman, Jordan. Legal experts and human rights groups have expressed concern about the secrecy and
procedures of the unusual tribunal, which
was created by the government — with U.S.
advice — to hear the
charges against Saddam and his former
lieutenants.
Prosecutors have said they may bring more cases against Saddam, including mass slayings of ethnic Kurds and Shiite Muslims, if he is not hanged first.
Saddam’s lawyers have challenged the legitimacy of the court, saying it is under the control of the United States. And human rights groups have raised questions about proposals to present testimony from anonymous witnesses and recorded testimony from witnesses now dead.
At least four roadside bomb explosions were reported in different cities yesterday, killing three civilians and a policeman. The blasts occurred in Baghdad, Mosul, Baquba and Riyadh, according to news agencies and local reports.
U. S. military authorities said a Marine who died in western Iraq was the seventh serviceman killed in Iraq in four days. Authorities did not release the name of the Marine, who was killed by an improvised bomb.
Meanwhile, a military vehicle carrying American lawmakers overturned on the way to the Baghdad airport Saturday, injuring two congressmen, according to a third congressman quoted yesterday by the Associated Press.
Rep. Tim Murphy, a Republican from Pennsylvania, was airlifted to a military hospital in Germany for an MRI on his neck, and Rep. Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat, was taken to a Baghdad hospital, said Rep. Jim Marshall ( D- Ga.), who was travelling with them but was not hurt.