Saddam implicates himself in executions, but defends legality

A DEFIANT Saddam Hussein admitted in court yesterday that he ordered the trial of 148 Shi’ites eventually executed in the 1980s.

He insisted that doing so was legal however, because they were suspected in an assassination attempt against him.

“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 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 Shi’ites, their most direct evidence against him so far in the four-month trial.

Saddam did not admit signing the approval in his comments, made just before the trial adjourned until March 12.

Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for the executions of 148 Shi’ites, as well as the arrest and torture of others and the confiscation and razing of their farmlands, following a July 8, 1982, attempt to kill the then-Iraqi leader in the southern town of Dujail.

The prosecution has argued that the crackdown 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 three months old.

The 148 people eventually sentenced to death in the case included at least 10 juveniles, one as young as 11, according to the documents. The death sentences came after what the prosecution called an “imaginary trial” before Saddam’s Revolutionary Court.

Saddam argued he was acting within the law. He told the court his co-defendants should be freed and he alone should be tried since he was the president and they were following orders.

“If the chief figure makes things easy for you by saying he was the one responsible, then why are you going after these people?” he said.

Saddam said the government had the right to confiscate land for the “national interest”, and he ordered “substantial compensation” paid to its owners.