Saddam trial judge ‘has been replaced’

THE chief judge in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial has been replaced, it was reported yesterday.

Arab satellite stations Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera said Judge Abdullah al-Amiri was replaced at the request of the Iraqi prime minister.

The name of the new judge was not reported. There was no immediate official confirmation the judge had been replaced.

Prosecutors had asked for Judge al-Amiri to be replaced after he allowed Saddam to lash out at Kurdish witnesses. And last week, he stirred further controversy when he told the former president that “you were not a dictator”.

Meanwhile, politicians angered by the relentless violence plaguing Iraq demanded explanations yesterday from the defence and interior ministers on what was being done to put an end to death squads and kidnappings.

The discovery of maimed bodies, the apparent victims of sectarian violence, dumped on city streets and in rivers has become commonplace in Iraq. Most are found bound, blindfolded and show signs of torture.

Police have found more than 60 bodies since Friday.

“I demand the defence and interior ministers be summoned to let us know their plans to stop these criminal acts — kidnappings, killings and assassinations against our people,” Hassan Bejar, of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in government, told parliament.

Meanwhile, legal history was made in Britain when a soldier admitted war crimes. The court martial marks the first time British servicemen had been prosecuted for war crimes under the International Criminal Court Act (ICCA) 2001.

The charges against a total of seven defendants relate to the death in custody of an Iraqi civilian in Basra in September 2003, and to the alleged ill-treatment of other detainees. Corporal Donald Payne, 35, pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating civilians detained in Iraq. The offence carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in jail.

Despite the claimed contraventions of international law by three of the men, their trial is not taking place at The Hague in Holland — the usual venue for war crimes trials — but at the Military Court Centre in Wiltshire.