Saddam Defiant As Trial Begins

A thinner, older-looking Saddam Hussein entered the courtroom Wednesday to stand trial Wednesday for a massacre of fellow Iraqis. Nearly as soon as he was secured into a small barred pen, Saddam became argumentative, challenging the legitimacy of the court trying him two years after his capture for the killings of 150 Shiites.

When the trial began, the 68-year-old ousted Iraqi leader — wearing a salt-and-pepper beard in a dark gray suit and open-collared white shirt — stood and asked the presiding judge: "Who are you? I want to know who you are."

"I preserve my constitutional rights as the president of Iraq," Saddam said. "I do not recognize the body that has authorized you and I don't recognize this aggression. What is based on injustice is unjust ... I do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect."

The presiding judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd, 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, CBS News correspondent Lara Logan reports for The Early Show.

Amin later read the charges, which are the same for all the defendants, and told them they face possible execution if convicted. Saddam didn't stay quiet during the judge's speech, though. In the middle of the charges being read, Logan reports that he stood up and said, "I said I am the Iraqi leader!"

The panel of five judges will both hear the case and render a verdict in what could be the first of several trials of Saddam for atrocities carried out during his 23-year-rule.

Saddam faces charges in a 1982 massacre of nearly 150 Shiites that could carry the death penalty if he is convicted. The former leader and his seven co-defendants were seated in three rows of black chairs, partitioned behind a low white metal barrier, in the center of the court directly in front of the judges bench.

As the trial started in Baghdad, residents of Dujail — where the massacre the former Iraqi leader is being tried for took place — held a demonstration calling for the execution of Saddam.

At the start of 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 who guided him by the elbow. He glanced at journalists watching through bulletproof glass from an adjoining room. He motioned for his escorts to slow down a little.

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. Ramadan also refused to identify himself to the judge. "I repeat what President Saddam Hussein has said," he added. The other defendants agreed to state their names.

The trial is taking place in the marble building that once served as the National Command Headquarters of his feared Baath Party. The building in Baghdad's Green Zone — the heavily fortified district where Iraq's government, parliament and the U.S. Embassy are located — was ringed with 10-foot blast walls and U.S. and Iraqi troops, with several Humvees and at least one tank deployed outside. U.S. soldiers led sniffer dogs around the grounds, looking for explosives.

The identities of judges had 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.

The defendants are facing charges that they ordered the killing in 1982 of nearly 150 people in the mainly Shiite village of Dujail north of Baghdad after a failed attempt on the former dictator's life.

If convicted, the men face the death penalty — by hanging.

In Wednesday's session, the charges were to be read out for the first time, and the defense was expected to ask for a three-month adjournment. The court was expected to grant one, though for how long was not known.

Many Iraqis were gathered around television sets to watch the trial, which was broadcast on state-run Iraqi stations and satellite stations across the Arab world. In particular, the Shiite Muslim majority and the Kurdish minority — the two communities most oppressed by Saddam's regime — have eagerly awaited the chance to see the man who ruled Iraq with unquestioned and total power held to justice.

"I'm very happy today. We've prayed for this day for years," said Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, who was an anti-Saddam opposition leader in exile for years and now is one of the fiercest proponents of the purge of Baathists from the government.

But across the Tigris River in the mainly Sunni Arab district of Azamiyah, some were embittered over the trial of Saddam, whose regime was dominated by Sunni Arabs who have now lost their power.

"Saddam is the lesser of evils," said Sahab Awad Maaruf, an engineer, comparing Saddam to the current Shiite-Kurdish led government. "He's the only legitimate leader for Iraqis."

There are also fears of attacks by insurgents — who are thought to include members of Saddam's regime — to disrupt the trial.

The court is operating not only under its own rules — laid out when the court was created in 2003 while Iraq was still run by American administrators — but also by a 1971 Saddam-era criminal law that some have criticized as not up to international standards.

That law says the judges can issue a guilty verdict if they are "satisfied" by the evidence — seen as lower standard of proof than "convinced beyond a reasonable doubt."

Saddam's defense lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said Tuesday he would ask for the postponement so he can better prepare the case.