Saddam refuses to enter plea as specific charges read

Saddam Hussein was today formally charged with murder, torture of women and children and the illegal arrest of 399 people in a crackdown against Shiites in the 1980s, bringing the Baghdad trial of the ousted Iraqi leader into a new phase.

Saddam, who sat alone in the defendants’ pen as the charges were read, refused to plead when chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman asked him if he was guilty or not.