Saddam: Where Is The Crime?
A defiant Saddam Hussein admitted in court Wednesday that he ordered the trial of 148 Shiites who were eventually executed in the 1980s, but insisted that doing so was legal because they were suspected in an assassination attempt against him.
"Where is the crime? Where is the crime?" Saddam asked, standing before the panel of five judges.
"If trying a suspect accused of shooting at a head of state, no matter what his name is, is considered a crime, then you have the head of state in your hands. Try him," Saddam said, arguing that his co-defendants should be released because he was the one in charge.
His dramatic courtroom speech came a day after prosecutors in his trial presented a presidential decree with a signature they said was Saddam's approving death sentences for the 148 Shiites, their most direct evidence against him so far in the four-month trial.
Saddam did not admit to signing the approval in his comments.
Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for the executions of 148 Shiites, as well as the arrest and torture of others and the confiscation and razing of their farmlands, following an attempt to kill Saddam in the town of Dujail on July 8, 1982.
The prosecution has argued that the crackdown that followed the assassination attempt went far beyond the actual attackers, presenting documents that show entire families were arrested, tortured and held for years, including women and children as young as 3 months old.
In other developments:
The 148 people eventually sentenced to death in the case included at least 10 juveniles, including an 11-year-old, according to the documents. The death sentences came after what the prosecution called an "imaginary trial" before Saddam's Revolutionary Court.
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.