The chief judge in Saddam Hussein's trial threw the ousted Iraqi leader's
intelligence chief out of court during a heated argument after the defense
accused the prosecution of trying to buy testimony from a witness.
Former Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein scratches his head while listening to the testimony of a
defence witness during his trial at the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad
May 31, 2006. Defence attorneys for Saddam Hussein accused the prosecution
on Wednesday of trying to buy a witness and putting someone on the stand
who perjured himself. [Reuters] |
The confrontation came Wednesday as defense lawyers stepped up their attempt
to undermine the prosecution case, demanding that all its witnesses be
re-examined to determine whether they were telling the truth. The lawyers also
said all prosecution documents should be reviewed if it turns out that some
Shiites the defendants are accused of killing are alive.
Tension in the court grew when one defense witness, testifying from behind a
curtain, claimed that chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi tried to bribe him to
testify against Saddam over a crackdown launched against Shiites in the town of
Dujail in the 1980s.
The witness said he and his father were arrested in Dujail but released. He
said that in 2004 he met al-Moussawi and recounted his story. Al-Moussawi "told
me, 'This testimony will not serve the Iraqi people. We want to sentence Saddam
to death.' "
"He gave me $500," the witness said. "He told me to say that my father was
arrested and killed in detention."
Al-Moussawi accused the defense of making up the testimony and demanded the
witness face criminal charges. "There has been a fabricated attack on the
prosecution in the past two days," he said. "It must be determined who recruited
him to fabricate his testimony."
When chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman warned the witness he could be prosecuted
if he were lying, Barzan Ibrahim _ Saddam's half-brother and one of his seven
co-defendants _ stood and chided the judge, telling him he should "be patient."
"Every session you have a lecture," Abdel-Rahman snapped, shouting at Ibrahim
to sit down.
When Ibrahim argued back, Abdel-Rahman shouted, "Get him out of the court!"
Three guards then escorted Ibrahim away, one of them holding him by the wrist.
It was the second time that Ibrahim, the former chief of the Mukhabarat
intelligence agency, has been thrown out of court during the trial, which began
in October.
Saddam and his co-defendants face possible execution by hanging if convicted
on crimes against humanity in the Dujail crackdown, which was sparked by a 1982
assassination attempt on the then-Iraqi leader. They are accused of arresting
hundreds of Dujail families, torturing and killing women and children and
killing 148 Shiites who were sentenced to death.
At the start of Wednesday's session, defense lawyers accused one of the
prosecution's first witnesses, Ali al-Haidari, of perjury.
In testimony in December, al-Haidari said he was arrested at age 14 in the
Dujail sweep and was tortured with electrical shocks and beatings. He also said
there was no shooting attack on Saddam in Dujail on July 8, 1982 _ only
celebratory shooting to Saddam's visit.
The defense presented a DVD that showed al-Haidari addressing a 2004 ceremony
in Dujail and praising the attack on Saddam as an attempt by "sons of Dujail ...
to kill the greatest tyrant in modern history."
"He's ... contradicting his testimony," defense lawyer Ziyad al-Najdawi told
the court.
He demanded al-Haidari be investigated for perjury and called for the trial
to be halted "to allow for an investigation into the veracity of the other
prosecution testimony." Abdel-Rahman did not rule on the defense request.
The court heard five defense witnesses before adjourning until Monday, but
the session was dominated by the defense arguments against the credibility of
the prosecution's case. On Tuesday, a witness claimed that 23 of the 148 Shiites
sentenced to death by Saddam's regime were alive and that he had met some of
them in Dujail recently.
Abdel-Rahman ordered an investigation into the claim.
Defense lawyer Mohammed Munib argued Wednesday that in light of the witness'
testimony and the perjury claims, the entire discovery process in the case
should be redone and all the prosecution witnesses reviewed.
"What we have seen has affected the basic evidence on which the prosecution
has depended," Munib said. "This is the heart of the issue, and it can't be
avoided or ignored."
He said that if the investigation reveals that some of those sentenced to
death are alive, then prosecution documents showing that 148 were killed must
have been "fabricated."
The documents are seen as the strongest piece of the prosecution's case. It
has presented a wide array of memos and letters from Saddam's presidential
office and the Mukhabarat intelligence agency with names of 399 men, women and
children imprisoned in the Dujail sweep and the 148 sentenced to death. The
documents showed that some of the 148 were children and that others were
tortured to death.