Appeals court could rule on Saddam verdict by January

Iraq's appeals court is expected to rule on Saddam Hussein's guilty verdict and death sentence by the middle of January, the chief prosecutor said today.

Additionally, the Associated Press has learned, Iraq's three-man presidential council agreed at least six months ago not to block the death penalty for Saddam, should it be upheld on appeal.

All three members of the Presidential Council - President Jalal Talabani and Vice Presidents Tariq al-Hashimi and Adil Abdul-Mahdi - must sign death warrants before executions can be carried out.

Talabani, a Kurd who opposes capital punishment, has permanently deputised Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite Muslim, to sign on his behalf. Abdul-Mahdi has said he would sign Saddam's death warrant, meaning two of three signatures were assured.

Al-Hashimi, the other vice president and a Sunni Muslim, gave his word that he also would sign a Saddam death penalty sentence as part of the deal under which he got the job on April 22, according to witnesses at the meeting, which was attended by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

"We wanted a written promise before the first meeting of the new parliament but later and during a meeting in the presence of American and British ambassadors and other politicians the promise became oral in which he vowed not oppose important rules and laws especially those related to Saddam," Deputy Parliament Speaker Khaled al-Attiyah said.

Thus the approval of the death penalties handed down Sunday for Saddam, his half brother, Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, chief of the Revolutionary Court, had been part of the pact under which al-Hashimi got one of two vice presidential post.

The Saddam and the other two men sentenced to hang were among eight defendants in a trial for the 1980s killings of nearly 150 Shiite Muslims from the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after a failed assassination attempt on Saddam in the city in 1982.

Thus, if the nine-judge appeals panel upholds the death sentences, they could be ready for signing shortly after the first of the year, according to a schedule laid out today by chief prosecutor Jaafar Moussawi.

According to him, the Iraqi High Tribunal, which issued the verdicts yesterday, must send the entire case file to the appeals panel within 10 days, or by November 15.

The Saddam defense team must submit its appeal to the tribunal by December 5.

On the same day that the defence appeal is given to the High Tribunal, that court is required to send it to the prosecutor general for study and preparation of counter-arguments.

There is no time limit for the prosecutor to answer the appeal, but Moussawi said he would submit his brief within days of receiving the defense appeal.

And while the appellate court also has no deadline for its ruling, Moussawi said it would act quickly because it had no other cases under consideration.

"The appeals panel will take less than a month to make its decision," Moussawi said.