Haggard Saddam forced to attend trial

SADDAM HUSSEIN was forced to attend his trial yesterday, looking haggard and wearing an Arab robe rather than his usual suit but walking in on his own, shouting “Down with Bush”.

His top co-defendant and half-brother Barzan Ibrahim - dressed only in an undershirt and long underwear - struggled with guards bringing him in and sat on the floor, his back to the judge, for much of the session.

Chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman pressed ahead after a stormy start sparked by his decision to order Saddam and his seven co-defendants to attend the session despite a defence boycott.

During the three-hour session, prosecutors made their strongest attempt yet directly to link Saddam to executions that allegedly took place in a 1982 crackdown in the Shi’ite town of Dujail north of Baghdad.

They produced documents, one with Saddam’s handwriting, and put two members of Saddam’s former regime on the stand as witnesses for the first time - Ahmed Hussein Khudayer al-Samarrai, the head of Saddam’s presidential office, and Hassan al-Obeidi, an intelligence officer.

Al-Samarrai, who held his post from 1984-1991, then again from 1995 until the fall of the regime in April 2003, insisted he knew nothing about the events in Dujail. “I am not fit to be a witness in this case,” he said, as Saddam smiled. Prosecutors displayed on a screen in the courtroom a document in Arabic dated to 1984 and allegedly written and signed by Saddam in which he ratified “the execution of the Dujail criminals”. Asked whether the signature and the handwriting at the bottom of the document were his, al-Samarrai said he could not be sure. “I don’t remember,” he said. “I don’t remember anything at all.”

Also shown in court was a 1987 memo from the presidential office’s legal department saying two people sentenced to death in connection with Dujail had not been executed. It suggested they be released on grounds of their old age and those responsible for the “negligence” be investigated.

A note written in the margin at the bottom, allegedly in Saddam’s handwriting, approved the investigation but says the two people should be spared execution “because we cannot allow coincidence to be more compassionate than us even when compassion here goes to the undeserving”.

Prosecutors argued the document showed Saddam was closely following the crackdown.

Al-Obeidi, who worked as a manager in the Mukhabarat, or intelligence agency, from 1980-1991, said guards had forced him to testify, then argued with the prosecutor over his role, bringing laughter from Saddam.

“This is terrorism,” Saddam said of how the court treated the witness.