The chief judge in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial was replaced today amid complaints from Shiite and Kurdish officials that he was too soft on the former Iraqi leader, a move that could raise accusations of government interference in the highly sensitive case.

A Kurdish security officer testifying in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial in Baghdad, Iraq, today showed the court body burns he allegedly received when armies of the deposed leader attacked his northern Iraqi village in 1988.

ABOUT 24 top former officials in Saddam Hussein’s regime, including a biological weapons expert known as ‘Dr Germ’, have been released from jail, while a militant group released a video yesterday of the purported killing of an American hostage.

Notorious Saddam-Hussein-era officials have been released from jail in Iraq and some have already left the country, an Iraqi lawyer said today.

The lawyer of former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said today that he has received several death threats and asked for US and British protection.

Saddam Hussein’s deputy Tariq Aziz has refused to testify against the former Iraqi leader at his trial, Aziz’s lawyer said, adding he expected Aziz to be released soon.

Top Saddam Hussein lieutenant Tariq Aziz will not testify against ousted dictator in any criminal trial, Aziz’s lawyer said today.

One of Iraq’s top scientists – dubbed Mrs Anthrax – is dying of cancer in US custody a lawyer claimed today.

A gas tanker truck wired with explosives blew up in a west Baghdad neighbourhood, killing one person, wounding 19 and lighting up the night sky with a fireball just hours after US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld left the Iraqi capital.

Tariq Aziz, the international face of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime, will not testify against the former dictator, his lawyer said today.

Tariq Aziz, once Saddam Hussein’s urbane voice to the world but now languishing in an Iraqi prison, has met his defence lawyer for the first time since his arrest in April last year.