Saddam Lawyers End Trial Boycott
Saddam Hussein's defense lawyers ended their monthlong boycott of his trial, attending proceedings Tuesday even though the chief judge rejected their demands that he step down. Their return gives a boost to a troubled trial.
The court also rejected a defense motion asking for the postponement of Tuesday's session because of a wave of sectarian violence the past week sparked by the bombing of a holy Shiite shrine in the central city of Samarra.
The Washington Post reports that more than 1,300 Iraqis have been killed in sectarian violence since last week's bombing, citing officials at Baghdad's main morgue.
The body count is rising today in Baghdad. Five explosions rocked the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 41 people and prompting fears that sectarian violence was continuing following last week's bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine. The biggest death toll appears to be at a gas station in an eastern Baghdad neighborhood, where a man detonated an explosives belt at a gas station, killing 23 and injuring more than 50.
President Bush on Tuesday decried the latest surge in sectarian violence and declared that for Iraqis "the choice is chaos or unity." Mr. Bush spoke after an Oval Office meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Berlusconi said that he would stand by plans to withdraw all of Italy's 3,000 troops from Iraq by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, in the heavily fortified court house where Saddam Hussein is being tried, prosecutors presented a document they said was signed by the former leader approving the executions of more than 140 Shiites in southern Iraq after an assassination attempt in the 1980s.
After about two hours of hearing documents, the court adjourned until Wednesday.
The document was among several presented by chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi concerning the killings of Shiites from the town of Dujail in 1982.
In other developments:
A memo from the Revolutionary Court, dated June 14, 1984, announced that 148 suspects had been sentenced to death by hanging and listed their names. The prosecutor said the signature on the memo was that of the court's head, Awad al-Bandar, one of Saddam's co-defendants.
A document dated two days later was a presidential order approving all 148 death sentences. The paper was signed by Saddam, al-Moussawi said, displaying the document with the signature on a screen in the court room.
The sentences were passed after an "imaginary trial," al-Moussawi told the court.
"None of the defendants were brought to court. Their statements were never recorded," he said.
The documents were presented after Saddam's lawyers ended their monthlong boycott of the tribunal.
The defense team's participation appeared to vindicate the tough approach chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman has taken since taking over the tribunal last month, pushing ahead with the proceedings even when the lawyers, and, at times, the defendants themselves, refused to attend.
Tuesday's session was one of the most orderly since the trial began in October. Saddam and his seven co-defendants entered the court and took their seats silently, in sharp contrast with nearly every other session, which began with Saddam and his half brother Barzan Ibrahim shouting slogans or arguing with the judge.
The former Iraqi president also ended a hunger strike he and some co-defendants started Feb. 12, two days before the last trial session, defense lawyer Khamis al-Obeidi said Sunday.
Prosecutors also displayed a March 1985 document said to be signed by Ibrahim, then the head of the Mukhabarat intelligence agency, ordering the executions to be carried out. The document also listed the 148 names.
Another document from the Revolutionary Court, dated March 23, 1985, confirmed that 96 executions took place.
Another 46 people were "liquidated during interrogations," a later Mukhabarat document stated. It also said four people were executed by mistake, even though their names were not on list of those sentenced to death, a man named Mahdi Abdel-Amir, two of his sons and his brother.
Saddam and the seven co-defendants are on trial for carrying out torture and illegal arrests and executions in the crackdown in Dujail. They face death by hanging if convicted.
Abdel-Rahman opened Tuesday's session by announcing that the five-judge panel had rejected a defense request that he and the chief prosecutor be removed.
Saddam's chief lawyer, Khaled al-Dulaimi, said he would appeal and asked that Tuesday's session be halted immediately, a request Abdel-R