Saddam pleads innocent to murder and torture

A DEFIANT Saddam Hussein pleaded innocent to charges of murder and torture when his long-awaited trial began yesterday with the one-time dictator arguing about the legitimacy of the court and scuffling with guards.

The first session of the trial lasted about three hours, and the judge ordered an adjournment until November 28.

Saddam and his seven co-defendants could face the death penalty if convicted for the 1982 massacre of nearly 150 Shi’ites in the town of Dujail. They are being tried in the former headquarters of Saddam’s Ba’ath Party.

After presiding judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd, read the defendants their rights and the charges against them - which also include forced expulsions and illegal imprisonment - he asked each for their plea. He started with the 68-year-old ousted dictator, saying: “Mr Saddam, go ahead. Are you guilty or innocent?”

Saddam - holding a copy of the Koran he brought with him into the session - replied quietly: “I said what I said. I am not guilty,” referring to his arguments earlier in the session.

Mr Amin read out the plea: “Innocent.”

The confrontation then became physical. When a break was called, Saddam stood, smiling, and asked to step out of the room. When two guards tried to grab his arms to escort him out, he angrily shook them off.

They tried to grab him again and Saddam struggled to free himself. Saddam and the guards shovedeach other and yelledfor about a minute.

It ended with Saddam getting his way and he was allowed to walk independently, with the two guards behind him, out of the room for the break.

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 during his 23-year-rule.

The identities of the judges have been a tightly held secret to ensure their safety, though Mr Amin’s name was revealed just before the trial began. The courtroom camera repeatedly focused on him, without showing the others.

Earlier, at the opening of the trial, the ousted Iraqi leader - looking thin with 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 do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect to its people, and I retain my constitutional right as the president of Iraq,” he said, brushing off the judge’s attempts to interrupt him.

“Neither do I recognise the body that has designated and authorised you, nor the aggression because all that has been built on false basis is false.”

Mr Amin, a Kurd, tried to get Saddam to formally identify himself but Saddam refused and finally sat.

Mr Amin read his name for him, calling him the “former president of Iraq”, bringing a protest from Saddam, who insisted he was still in the post.

The other defendants include Saddam’s former intelligence chief Barazan Ibrahim, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan and other lower-level Ba’athist civil servants.