A defence witness in Saddam Hussein’s trial over the killings of Iraqi Shi’ite villagers claimed many of those allegedly executed were still alive and said the prosecution case was built on bribes. The anonymous witness said he was a teenager in Dujail in 1982, when an attempt on Saddam’s life led to what the prosecution has termed was a massive crackdown on the village.
The trial of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants for crimes against humanity heard testimony on Monday on behalf of the judge who sentenced 148 Shi’ites to death more than two decades ago. Awad al-Bandar oversaw the trial in 1984 for the people of Dujail.
The trial of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants was expected to resume on Monday with further defence testimony seeking to refute the charges of crimes against humanity. The accused have had a chance to bring witnesses to speak out on their behalf over the charges relating to the killing of Shi’ite villagers after an attempt on Saddam’s life in 1982.
At least 39 people were killed in an bloody explosion of violence across Iraq on Monday, including a spate of bombings against buses carrying people to work. The attacks underlined the parlous security situation in Iraq as agreement on the key defence and interior ministries remained elusive, despite the formation of a new government on May 20.
Gunmen in Baghdad killed the coach of the Iraqi national tennis team and two players, reportedly for wearing Western-style tennis shorts, an Iraqi Olympic official said on Friday. The coach, Hussein Ahmed Rashid, was murdered along with two of his players, Nasser Ali Hatem and Wissam Adel Auda, outside his home in the capital’s southern al-Saidiyah neighbourhood.
A bomb blast killed three people and wounded 11 in one of Baghdad’s main squares on Thursday as the interim defence minister said restoring security to the capital was top priority for the new government. The force of the explosion levelled a building on Tahrir Square in the capital’s commercial heart, one of a series of attacks around the country.
Former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz took the witness stand on Wednesday to defend Saddam Hussein and his associates in a case involving the killing of Shi’ite civilians from Dujail in the 1980s. His testimony focused on the series of assassination attempts against officials of the Ba’ath regime at that time.
The trial of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein over the killing of Shi’ites in the 1980s began hearing on Tuesday the testimony of defence witnesses, marking a new stage in the long-running process. Saddam himself was not in court for the hearing, the day after he defiantly refused to plead to detailed charges.
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Monday defiantly refused even to enter a plea as charges were formally presented in a hearing that marked a new stage in his long-running trial. The chief judge read out charges implicating Saddam and the other defendants in the massacre of 148 Shi’ite villagers in the 1980s.
At least 16 Iraqis were killed in an upsurge of violence on Sunday, including five who died in a blast on Baghdad’s Palestine Street that targeted a passing police patrol, Iraqi security officials said. The roadside bombing in the east of the capital missed the police patrol but killed the bystanders and wounded four others, a defence ministry source said.
United States forces are ”zooming in” on al-Qaeda’s Iraq frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who may be in Baghdad or a nearby town, a US military spokesperson said on Thursday. Major General Rick Lynch said that during raids in Yusufiyeh, a town south of the capital, coalition forces had found footage of the Internet video message delivered by al-Zarqawi last month.
A suicide bomber attacked a crowd of people waiting outside a heavily guarded court building in Baghdad on Thursday, killing 10 Iraqis and wounding 52, police said. Two United States soldiers also died in a roadside bomb attack. On Wednesday, the corpses of 43 Iraqis were found in the streets of Baghdad and other cities.
A suicide bomber attacked a police recruiting station on Wednesday in Fallujah, killing five people in an attack apparently aimed at discouraging Sunni Arabs from joining the force, police said. Police also found the bodies of 14 Iraqi men in Baghdad who apparently were the latest victims of a wave of sectarian violence involving death squads.
Al-Qaeda’s number-two leader has issued a video saying that hundreds of suicide bombings in Iraq have ”broken the back” of the United States military — the latest in a volley of messages by the terror network’s most prominent figures. Ayman al-Zawahri said US and British forces ”have achieved nothing but loss, disaster and misfortune”.
A sister of Iraq’s new Sunni Arab vice-president was killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad on Thursday, police said. She died one day after her brother called for the Sunni-dominated insurgency to be crushed by force. In southern Iraq, a bomb hit an Italian military convoy on Thursday morning, killing four soldiers.
Iraqi prime minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki said on Tuesday that he expected to have his Cabinet line-up ready for approval in two weeks as hectic lobbying began for key ministerial posts. ”I believe that in the next 15 days we can have a new government and present it to Parliament,” Maliki told state television.
Shi’ite leader Jawad al-Maliki has been given 30 days to form Iraq’s first full-term post-Saddam Hussein government after being nominated as prime minister to end a four-month political deadlock. United States President George Bush hailed al-Maliki’s nomination on Saturday.
The Shi’ite alliance nominated a tough-talking Shi’ite politician, Jawad al-Maliki, as prime minister in a move that breaks the long impasse over forming a new government aimed at pulling Iraq out of its sectarian strife. Al-Maliki replaces outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Bowing to intense pressure, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has agreed to allow Shi’ite lawmakers to find someone else to head the new government, abandoning his claim on another term in the face of Sunni and Kurdish opposition. Al-Jaafari’s abrupt reversal was an apparent breakthrough in the struggle to form a national unity government.
At least 19 people were killed across Iraq on Wednesday as two school teachers were reported slain by militants who slit their throats in front of their pupils, the government said. ”Two groups of terrorists have cut the throats of two teachers in front of their students in the Amna and Shahid Hamdi primary schools in the Shaab district of Baghdad,” a government statement said.
The chief judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein ruled on Wednesday that signatures linking the ousted Iraqi leader to a massacre in the 1980s were ”authentic”. Shortly after the trial resumed following a two-day recess, Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman again adjourned the trial, until April 24.
The Iraqna Mobile Phone Company made a fresh plea on Tuesday for the release of two Kenyan telecommunication engineers kidnapped in Baghdad three months ago. Iraqna, a subsidiary of the Cairo-based Orascom Telecommunications, ran advertisements in most Iraqi dailies on Tuesday asking the captors of the two engineers — Moses Munyao and George Noballa — to free them unharmed.
Three suicide bombers, two of them disguised as women, killed at least 79 people and wounded 164 as worshippers left a popular northern Baghdad Shi’ite mosque after weekly Friday prayers. The blasts marked the second major attack on Iraq’s majority community in as many days.
Iraq’s embattled Prime Minister, Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, speaks to Jonathan Steele in Baghdad in the leader’s first interview since United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s recent move to break the Iraqi political deadlock.
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched into a new tirade against his trial on Wednesday and lambasted the interior ministry as the tumultuous process resumed after a three week break. The only defendant in the court, Saddam Hussein was dressed in a crisp black suit and appeared composed as judge Rauf Abdel Rahman reopened his trial on crimes against humanity at the high-security Baghdad courthouse.
Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who is currently facing charges of crimes against humanity, will face, for the first time, genocide charges over the Anfal campaign against Kurds that left around 180Â 000 people dead, the Iraqi High Tribunal said on Tuesday. Similar charges are also being laid against six co-defendants.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her British counterpart, Jack Straw, made a surprise visit on Sunday to Iraq, carrying a sharp message of international impatience with delays in the formation of a new government. The ministers flew in secretly under tight security in pouring rain from Britain.
United States journalist Jill Carroll has been released almost 12 weeks after being abducted at gunpoint on a Baghdad street, Sunni politician Tariq al-Hashimi told Agence France-Presse on Thursday. ”She is free and is with me right now,” Hashimi said, but did not give further details.
A suicide bomber on Monday killed 40 people waiting outside an Iraqi army recruitment centre as United States forces defended themselves against charges of attacking a Shi’ite mosque in Baghdad. The attack was the deadliest single attack in Iraq since a suicide attack in January on police recruits in Ramadi.
United States and British forces freed three Christian peace activists — a Briton and two Canadians — without firing a shot early on Thursday, ending a four-month hostage drama in which an American among the group was shot to death and dumped on a Baghdad street earlier this month. Meanwhile, at least 53 Iraqis died in violence.
Iraq entered the fourth year of war on Tuesday amid fears of civil war, as United States President George Bush vowed not to ”abandon” the violence-torn country. At least 26 people died in attacks around the country on Monday on the third anniversary of the US-led invasion. In the US, Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq.
Iraq marked the third anniversary of the United States-led invasion on Monday with a fresh spate of killings, a deadlock over the new government and warnings of civil war as Shi’ites gathered in the south for a major religious ceremony. US and Iraqi forces were on high alert to avert Sunni extremist attempts to trigger renewed outbursts of communal strife.