Rapt Iraqis Watch Saddam Trial

A rapt Iraq watched on TV as a defiant Saddam Hussein pleaded innocent to charges of murder and torture as his long-awaited trial began Wednesday with the one-time dictator arguing about the legitimacy of the court and scuffling with guards.

CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey reports that cafes in Baghdad were packed for an event few here dared to dream of when Saddam was in power. In the town of Dujail, the site of the massacre for which Saddam is on trial, people took to the streets carrying pictures of relatives who died, a release of years of fear and hatred.

The first session of the trial lasted about three hours, and the judge ordered an adjournment until Nov. 28.

Saddam and his seven co-defendants could face the death penalty by hanging if convicted for the 1982 massacre of nearly 150 Shiites in the town of Dujail. They are being tried in the former headquarters of Saddam's Baath Party.

Sitting inside a white pen with metal bars, Saddam appeared gaunt and frail and his salt-and-pepper beard was unkempt as he pleaded innocent to charges of murder, torture, forced expulsions and illegal detentions. He wore a suit with a white shirt and no tie.

Gone were the Homburg hat, the cigar, the shotgun fired from a reviewing stand. So were a few pounds after nearly two years in an American military prison. Still, the swagger and the smirk remained, the bearing of a man accustomed to 23 years of unchallenged power.

After presiding judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd, read the defendants their rights and the charges against them — which also include forced expulsions and illegal imprisonment — he asked each for their plea. He started with the 68-year-old ousted dictator, saying, "Mr. Saddam, go ahead. Are you guilty or innocent?"

Saddam — holding a copy of the Quran he brought with him into the session and held throughout — replied quietly, "I said what I said. I am not guilty," referring to his arguments earlier in the session.

Amin read out the plea, "Innocent."

The confrontation then became physical. When a break was called, Saddam stood, smiling, and asked to step out of the room. When two guards tried to grab his arms to escort him out, he angrily shook them off.

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan reports for CBSNews.com that when the guard tried to grab Saddam again, he

It ended with Saddam walking independently, with the two guards behind him, out of the room for the break.

A too-busy President Bush did not watch, even as the White House hailed the trial as a key step in Iraq's transition to a functioning democracy.

"Saddam Hussein is facing Iraqi justice," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "The trial is a symbol that the rule of law is returning to Iraq. We hope this trial will help bring some closure for the Iraqi people to their country's dark past."

Americans today do not believe that the overall result of the Iraq war has been worth the costs – just 32 percent said it was in the latest CBS News poll conducted in October, 2005. But until now, Americans had consistently rated the specific act of removing Saddam from power as more worthwhile than the war's results, generally. But that is not the case any longer: in that recent poll only 34 percent saw removing Saddam as being worth the costs.

In May of 2003, 65 percent of Americans surveyed supported the ousting of Saddam.

The Dujail trial is the first of about a dozen cases prosecutors intend to bring against Saddam and members of his inner circle in an attempt to hold them accountable for a 23-year regime that saw tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and imprisoned.

And

CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk said the outcome of Saddam's tribunal, the rest of which is being strategically delayed until November so evidence can be reviewed, may be obvious. Saddam will likely be found guilty because "there is 'smoking gun' evidence of his responsibility for the 1982 massacre of civilians, including children, in Dujail."

Other cases likely will tackle his regime's Anfal Offensive that killed 180,000 Kurds, a poison gas attack on Halabja that killed 5,000 and a crackdown on rebellious Shiites and Kurds in 1991.

The five-judge panel will both hear the case and render a verdict. The identities of the judges have been a tightly held secret to ensure their safety, though Amin's name was revealed just before the trial began. The courtroom camera repeatedly focused on him, without showing the others.

The judge tried to get Saddam to formally identify himself almost a dozen times, but Saddam repeatedly refused. After several moments, at the judge's request, Saddam sat down.

For a while, it seemed as if the judge was in danger of losing control of the courtroom as he and Saddam argued back and forth, Logan reports.

Later, Amin read the defendants their rights and the charges against them, and told them they face possible execution if convicted. Saddam slumped low in his chair, occasionally writing notes on a yellow pad throughout the hearing.

The chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Mousawi, then outlined the case.

Starting the session, Amin called the defendants into the room one by one. Saddam was the last to enter, escorted by two Iraqi guards in bulletproof vests guiding him by the elbow. He glanced at journalists watching through bulletproof glass from an adjoining room. He motioned for his escorts to slow down.

After sitting, he greeted his co-defendants, saying, "Peace be upon you," sitting next to co-defendant Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court.

The other defendants include Saddam's former intelligence chief Barazan Ibrahim, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan and other lower-level Baathist civil servants.

Reaction to Saddam's trial varied in Iraq, where his loyalists, together with hardcore members of his Baath party and feared security services are an important faction of a Sunni-led insurgency wracking Iraq for the past 2½ years.

In Baghdad, Shiite construction worker Salman Zaboun Shanan sat with his family at home in the Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, having taken the day off from work to watch the trial.

When Saddam appeared on television, his wife spat in disgust.

"I hope he is executed, and that anyone who suffered can take a piece of his flesh," said Shanan, who was jailed during Saddam's rule, as was his wife, Sabiha Hassan, and several of their sons.

But across the Tigris River in the mainly Sunni Arab district of Azamiyah, some were embittered by the trial of Saddam, whose regime was dominated by Sunni Arabs who have now lost their power. "Saddam is the lesser of evils," said engineer Sahab Awad Maaruf, comparing Saddam to the current Shiite-Kurdish led government. "He's the only legitimate leader for Iraqis."

Saddam was ousted after U.S.-led forces swept into Iraq in March 2003 and marched in to Baghdad. He fled the capital and was on the run for nearly eight months until American forces found in him hiding in a cellar in a rural area outside his hometown of Tikrit north of Baghdad on Dec. 13, 2003.

He has been held since in a U.S. detention facility at Baghdad International Airport.