Saddam: Where Is The Crime?

Former Iraqi Leader Admits Ordering Trial Of 148 Shiites

(CBS/AP) 
But Saddam argued he was acting within the law. He told the court his co-defendants should be freed and that he alone should be tried since they were following orders.

"If the chief figure makes thing easy for you by saying he was the one responsible, then why are you going after these people?" he said. "A head of state is here. Try him and let the others go their way," he said.

He pointed to Awad al-Bandar, the former Revolutionary Court whose signature was allegedly on document announcing the death sentences, presented to the court on Tuesday.

"I referred them (the prisoners) to the Revolutionary Court in accordance with the law," he said. "So Awad tried them in accordance to the law, he had the right to try or to acquit according to the law and according to his own judgment."

He referred to the destruction of the Dujail families' farmland, saying: "I razed the land. I don't mean I rode a bulldozer and razed it, but I razed it. It was a resolution issued by the Revolutionary Command Council," a regime institution that Saddam headed.

He said the government had the right to confiscate land for the "national interest" and said he ordered "substantial compensation" be paid to its owners.

Chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman was about to adjourn the session when Saddam interrupted him and asked to be allowed to speak. Saddam stood and made the comments in a 15-minute speech, then the judge adjourned the session until March 12.

Meanwhile, violence raged unabated in Iraq on Wednesday as attacks killed at least 30 people in Baghdad and mortar rounds fell on homes in a nearby town. Iraq's defense minister has taken drastic measures, including sending Iraqi tanks into the city to patrol, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports.

A spokesman for the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars blasted the Iraqi government for failing to staunch the sectarian attacks that have pushed the country toward civil war.

"It is clear that the government and its security forces are incapable of taking any action," said Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for the Sunni clerical group. Government forces, he said, should "do their duty and withdraw to the Green Zone," the secure region in central Baghdad that houses the U.S. Embassy.

Al-Kubaisi denied Sunnis were behind the latest attacks, saying Shiite politicians and religious leaders were trying to inflame sectarian hatred "to make use of these events and everything in this country to achieve one goal, to serve their future interests."

"The plan for those terrorist groups to instigate a civil war is not successful and it won't be successful," said Iraq's Minister of Public Works, Nisreen Berwari, in an interview with CBS News Up to the Minute contributor Frank Ucciardo. "At the end of the day, there is no major division of differences between Iraqi groups."

Wednesday's most dramatic attack, a car bomb near a traffic police office in a primarily Shiite neighborhood in southeast Baghdad, killed at least 23 people and wounded 58, according to police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud.

About an hour earlier, a bomb hidden under a car detonated as a police patrol was passing near downtown Tahrir Square, said Interior Ministry Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi. Police were unharmed but three civilians died and 15 were injured.

The latest blasts occurred one day after Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad traded bombings and mortar fire against mainly religious targets, killing at least 68 people following an end to curfews and vehicle restrictions that had briefly calmed a series of sectarian reprisal attacks.