Saddam Hussein’s Jordan-based legal team will meet his Iraqi lawyer soon to draw up a battle plan for his next court appearance, one of the lawyers said on Thursday.
Issam Ghazzawi, a member of the team, confirmed that Saddam’s Iraqi courtroom lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi is expected in Amman in the next 24 hours to brief the team on the trial, which was adjourned until November 28.
A defiant Saddam and seven former henchmen went on trial on Wednesday on charges including murder and torture over the massacre of more than 140 Shi’ite villagers in 1982.
“We recorded three hours of the trial, but less than a half hour is actually audible,” said Ghazzawi, who described the technical problems as “intentional.”
“The goal was to make it so that the world could only hear the statements of the prosecutor, while when the judge and accused spoke, you couldn’t hear a thing,” he said.
“We need to talk to Khalil because he was there at the tribunal and can fill us in on what we couldn’t hear.”
Ghazzawi also restated his belief that the trial of Saddam was “illegal”, something he said many other lawyers believe after witnessing the trial.
On Wednesday, the legal team accused the Iraqi and United States governments of preventing Saddam from meeting with his non-Iraqi lawyers or confronting witnesses.
‘Lost opportunity’
The Arab press on Thursday questioned the legitimacy of the “occupier” Iraqi court and predicted the case would deepen Iraq’s sectarian divide.
“There are fears that this trial will become an instrument of revenge and not of justice,” Lebanon’s top-selling An-Nahar newspaper wrote.
Noting that “the legitimacy of the Iraqi court is subject to controversy in the legal community and among human rights organisations”, the newspaper said the trial could “exacerbate tensions between Sunnis and Shi’ites and strengthen the insurgents”.
The editor of Jordan’s independent daily Al-Arab Al-Yom, Taher al-Adwan, called the trial “surrealist… with a court of Iraqi judges but behind the curtain US soldiers who walked the former Iraqi leaders in with their hands cuffed”.
He called October 19 “a difficult date to forget in the Arab consciousness”.
“Arabs hear today about the crimes of Saddam and his henchmen, but they see Iraq becoming enveloped in a whirlpool of violence and terrorism and facing the danger of a civil war,” he wrote.
“The reality that is seen today is stronger than the history we hear about.”
Lebanon’s As-Safir called the trial “a lost opportunity”.
“For this trial to succeed, the occupation of Iraq would have had to succeed… this trial is being run under the the protection of the occupant’s tanks, which will only exacerbate conflicts and reinforce the factors of division in Iraq.”
In Egypt, the state-run daily Al-Gomhurya dedicated only a small portion of its front page to the trial, but inside, an editorial writer said: “The United States is killing Saddam ‘legitimately.'” – AFP