End to hearing of defence witnesses in Saddam trial

The chief judge declared an end to the hearing of defence witnesses in the trial of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad today and said the prosecution will present its closing argument next week.

The declaration came despite complaints by the defence team that it has not had the freedom to properly present its case and that many of its motions were not ruled on by chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman.

“For your client alone, you’ve presented 26 witnesses. If that’s not enough to present your case, then 100 won’t work,” Abdel-Rahman told defence lawyer Khamis al-Obeidi, who insisted he still had “effective and useful” witnesses to call.

“I’ve finished hearing witnesses,” Abdel-Rahman said.

“We have heard your witnesses, we’ve listened to every word. God willing, it will all end fine.”

“God willing,” al-Obeidi said sullenly.

Abdel-Rahman adjourned the trial until next Monday, when he said the prosecution would present its closing arguments. He said the defence would give its final statement on July 10.

Presumably after that, the court would adjourn to consider its verdicts in the trial of Saddam and seven former members of his regime.

The eight defendants face possible execution by hanging if convicted on charges of crimes against humanity in a crackdown against Shiites in the town of Dujail, launched after a 1982 assassination attempt against the then-Iraqi leader. They are accused of illegally arresting hundreds of Shiites – including women and children – torturing some to death and killing 148 people who were sentenced to death for the attack on Saddam.

The defence insisted it had not been allowed to give a proper defence.

“We haven’t been able to consult with our clients alone,” said lawyer Wadud Fawzi. “For 58 days we haven’t been able to even meet with our clients .. We can’t exchange any documents with them, that is an impediment to the defence.”

He said investigating judges who gather evidence for the trial had not sought out documents the defence requested “that could help acquit our clients” and that the court had ignored its request to investigate claims that some of the 148 Shiites supposedly killed were still alive.

The court today heard a quick series of defence witnesses, including three former bodyguards of Saddam who were with him on the day of the shooting attack on his motorcade in Dujail. The witnesses testified anonymously, from behind a curtain to protect them from reprisals.

They said Saddam ordered his guards to stop firing back when gunmen in a nearby palm grove shot at his car. “My understanding at that time the president did not want that even an animal in the groves to be hurt by the bodyguards’ fire,” one of the witnesses said.

Another of the witnesses said some Dujail residents approached Saddam after the attack “and they were crying to apologise. I remember, he told them, ‘They (the attackers) don’t represent you, you are good people.”’

Abdel-Rahman barred one of the co-defendants, former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, from attending today’s session after throwing him out of the court yesterday for arguing with him.

Abdel-Rahman angrily closed the court to the public for several hours after accusing a defence lawyer of trying to prompt a witness – Saddam’s half-brother and former adviser Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan – to make political speeches. Later, he allowed journalists back into the chamber and resumed a video broadcast of the session.

Tensions have grown in the court after the tough-talking Abdel-Rahman effectively shut down a defence attempt to discredit the prosecution’s case. Last month, three witnesses testified that some of the 148 Shiites were still alive and living in Dujail.

The defence argued that, if the claims were true, the prosecution’s portrayal of the crackdown was deeply flawed and that all the documents it presented should be reviewed for accuracy.

Abdel-Rahman, however, had the three witnesses arrested for perjury, along with a fourth witness who claimed that the chief prosecutor tried to bribe him to testify against Saddam.

Yesterday, alleged confessions of the four witnesses were read in court, admitting they committed perjury either because they were intimidated by Saddam loyalists or offered rewards by the defence.

The defence team alleged the confessions were forced, and two of the witnesses - who have since been released and fled abroad – said they were beaten in detention to make them sign the confessions.

An American lawyer on the defence team, Curtis Doebbler, said today that the confessions cast doubt on the court’s fairness, saying they “were taken under coercive pressure from witnesses who have been beaten and arrested, held incommunicado. reading those into record indicates bias in any court in the world.”

“These type of allegations from the side of the court draw into concern the impartiality of the court,” he said.

Doebbler, a visiting professor at Najah University in the West Bank, is one of two American lawyers on the defence team, along with former US attorney general Ramsey Clark.