Red Cross refuses to meet Saddam's lawyer

The Red Cross has cancelled a meeting with a French lawyer who wanted the agency to check whether former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was on hunger strike.

Florian Westphal, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said lawyer Emmanuel Ludot would not be coming to the ICRC headquarters in Geneva today as announced.

“We cancelled the meeting because we didn’t think it was really very useful,” said Westphal. “There are no plans for another meeting at the moment.”

He said the ICRC had read media reports about Saddam’s 11 top lieutenants being on weekend hunger strikes in protest at their detention, but had no first-hand information.

Ludot said he had asked for the meeting with the ICRC to make sure that his client had not joined the strike.

Ludot said the lawyers representing Saddam had information from Iraq “that gives the impression that he has in fact decided with 11 of his comrades to stop eating, but we have American denials.”

The ICRC stresses that it treats Saddam like any other detainee in its visits to prisoners held by US and other forces in Iraq.

“We follow several thousand detainees continuously in Iraq and try to carry out visits on a regular basis, security conditions permitting,” Westphal said.

Saddam was last visited by the ICRC in November, and no special visit is planned, Westphal said.

“We’re just continuing to observe the situation,” he added.

Visits to Saddam have been occurring every six to eight weeks, the ICRC has said.