Saddam has 'too little time' to prepare case
Plans to hold former Iraq president Saddam Hussein’s trial next month gives too little time to his defence team to prepare his case, a family lawyer complained today.
British-based lawyer Abdel Haq Alani also complained that Saddam’s defence attorneys are being kept in the dark on charges against him and doubted that the trial would start on October 19 as announced by Iraqi officials.
The Iraqi Special Tribunal has accused Saddam in the 1982 massacre of 143 Shiite Muslims in Dujail, a town north of Baghdad, after a foiled assassination attempt. If found guilty, Saddam could receive the death penalty.
Iraq’s government spokesman Laith Kubba said seven co-defendants from Saddam’s regime would also face trial. They include: Barazan Ibrahim, intelligence chief at the time and Saddam’s half brother; former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan; and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, at the time a Baath Party official in Dujail, Kubba said.
Alani, who has been counselling Saddam’s eldest daughter, Raghad, on legal matters, said the trial date was the “wish of the ruling group in the Green Zone, but certainly not the court” – a reference to the Iraqi government operating in a Baghdad neighbourhood guarded by the US military.
“I’m not sure that the 19th of October is a true date for the trial,” he said in a telephone interview from London without elaborating, adding that he had seen no official notification to the effect.
“We haven’t been served an official notice about the date of trial,” he said. “It was only a statement made by an Iraqi government official to the media, which absolutely has no value in the law.”
Alani said it was up to the Iraqi tribunal and judiciary to set a court date, not the government.
“If the Iraqi government awaits to hammer out a political show, it’s free to do so, but this does not concern us in the defence team,” he said.
If the trial starts next month, Alani said it will “undercut the defence capability to review the case”.
“How can one review thousands and thousands of pages in just a matter of a few days?” he asked. “This court has been deliberating with the evidence for the past year, but it has been keeping it away from the defence, which is not fair.”
“How can you spend a year deliberating evidence and give the defence two weeks? This is not justice,” he added.
Alani said Saddam’s family has picked a new defence team to replace a squabbling group of more than 1,500 Arab and Western attorneys fired last month amid accusations the group was harmful to Saddam because of conflicting legal advice and bickering among its members.
The lawyer’s names are being withheld pending Saddam’s approval, Alani added.
