Saddam defence team demands security

The body of a defence lawyer in Saddam Hussein’s mass murder trial was found dumped in the street with two bullet wounds in the head hours after gunmen dragged him from his office, terrorising the defence team, who today demanded the trial be further postponed or even moved out of Iraq.

Four American service members were killed in insurgent attacks, bringing to 19 the number killed this week, including last Saturday when Iraq held a landmark referendum on a new constitution.

Three Marines died when a bomb hit their patrol in the village of Nasser wa Salam, 25 miles west of Baghdad yesterday, the US military announced.

The surviving American troops clashed with gunmen, killing two insurgents and capturing four.

An American soldier was killed in the north-western town of Hit by “indirect fire,” a term that usually means a mortar or rocket attack, the military said.

The latest deaths brought to 1,992 the number of members of the US military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

It was not known if the killers of defence lawyer Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi were Saddam opponents lashing out at the team or perhaps Sunni insurgents – who include many former Saddam supporters – trying to disrupt the trial.

Ten masked gunmen burst into his office Thursday evening in Baghdad’s Shaab neighbourhood and dragged him away.

Hours later, his body, with two bullet shots to the head, was found on a sidewalk by the Fardous Mosque in the nearby eastern neighbourhood of Ur, said police Maj Falah al-Mohammedawi.

The killing sent a chill among the other 12 defence lawyers who were present at Wednesday’s opening session of Saddam’s trial.

After discussions among them, they demanded that the trial’s resumption – set for November 28 – be further postponed if investigations into the killing are not finished.

They also demanded the government provide them protection and even move the trial outside Iraq, said Khamees Hamid al-Ubaidi, one of Saddam’s two lawyers.

Moving the trial seemed highly unlikely. The government has fiercely rejected any international venue, insisting Saddam should be tried by Iraqis in Iraq.

“It is time to lay low,” al-Ubaidi said. “When something like this happens, who wouldn’t be terrified?” He said he had taken personal steps for security but wouldn’t give details.

Interior Ministry and other government officials were meeting tonight to discuss protection for the defense, al-Ubaidi said.

Ministry and government officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the meeting or on the lawyers’ demands.

Heavy security was provided for prosecutors and judges in the Saddam trial, seen as likely targets of insurgents.

Their names have not been revealed and their faces were not shown in the broadcast of Wednesday’s session – with the exception of the presiding judge and the top prosecutor, whose identities were revealed for the first time on Wednesday.

But no security measures were extended to the defence lawyers. Their identities have been known, though most of them have not been prominent in the press.

“The government exerts its best efforts to provide security for all people and all those involved in the trial, but we cannot provide total security because of the violence in the country,” government spokesman Laith Kubba said earlier today, condemning the killing.

“We do not know who was behind this operation. Is it designed to hinder the trial process or is it an case of vendetta?” he said.

Saddam’s chief lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said after the kidnapping that defense lawyers have gotten many threats in past weeks by e-mail, mobile phone text message and telephone.

Al-Janabi was defending Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former head of Saddam’s Revolutionary Court. Saddam and the seven top officials from his Baath regime face possible death sentences if convicted in their trial on charges of murder and torture in a 1982 massacre of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail. They have pleaded innocent.

During Wednesday’s session, al-Janabi, with silver hair and a dark black moustache, sat with the other defence lawyers in two rows of desks to the right of their clients. Al-Janabi spoke at least once during the session, but he was not as prominent as al-Dulaimi or another lawyer who often spoke combatively with the judge.

Meanwhile, Iraqis were still waiting to know the outcome of last Saturday’s referendum, and they likely won’t hear the final results until early next week. Initial returns indicated it had passed, but electoral officials are conducting an audit of unsually high “yes” votes in some areas to ensure there are no irregularities – amid Sunni Arab accusations of fraud.

The election commission announced turnout figures from the vote today, saying 9,875,000 Iraqis cast ballots – or 63% of the registered voters. That was higher than January’s parliament elections, in which 60% of Iraqis participated, with few Sunni Arabs turning out at the polls.

Last Saturday, the second strongest turnout came in overwhelmingly Sunni Salahuddin province – with 88%, just after Kurdish Irbil’s 90%. Even conflict-torn Sunni Anbar province saw a 32% turnout this time, compared to a miniscule two percent in January.

The numbers reflected Sunni Arabs’ determination to defeat the constitiution they fear will split Iraq.

Initial figures from the provinces indicated that the veto attempt failed and the charter passed. But the audit has raised questions of irregularities in the balloting.

In violence today, the bodies of three policemen who had been blindfolded and shot in the head by insurgents near the Jordanian border were brought Baghdad, police said.

The body of a civilian was found in central Baghdad, police said. Drive-by shootings in Baghdad killed six people.

The US military declared an end today to Operation River Gate, an offensive by 3,000 US and Iraqi forces launched October 4 in and around Haditha, 140 miles north-west of Baghdad.

It aimed at suppressing insurgents in the area ahead of the referendum.