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Judge Lays Out Charges Against Saddam: ; Murder, Torture, Expulsions, Disappearances Top Despot's 1st Trial

Posted on: Saturday, 15 October 2005, 00:00 CDT

By Mariam Fam

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein likely will face charges of premeditated murder, torture and forced expulsion and disappearances when he goes on trial next week for a 1982 massacre of Shiites, a court official said Thursday.

Saddam and seven other defendants are accused of killing 143 Shiites in the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after a failed assassination attempt against Saddam.

Prosecutors have not announced the exact charges, which are expected when the trial opens on Wednesday. Investigating judge Raid Juhi told reporters in Baghdad that the charges would focus on the areas of "crimes of premeditated murder, forced expulsion of residents, torture and forced disappearances of individuals."

Saddam could face the death penalty if convicted.

Juhi also reaffirmed that there would be no postponement of the trial's start, which Saddam's attorneys had sought to review documents they received Sept. 25.

"The Special Tribunal has enabled the representatives of the defense through all legal means to completely review all the evidence, documents and investigation papers," he said.

The trial is expected to be the first of about a dozen involving crimes against humanity committed by Saddam and his regime's henchmen during his 23-year rule. These include the 1988 gassing of up to 5,000 Kurds in Halabja and the bloody 1991 suppression of a Shiite uprising in the south after a U.S.-led coalition drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.

Some of those cases "are about to be concluded in a few days" and will then be handed over to the Iraqi Special Tribunal for trial, Juhi said.

It is not known when the next trial will start. It has taken three months between the time the Dujail case was presented to the court and the trial's start.

Saddam, 68, has been jailed under American control at a U.S. military detention complex since his December 2003 capture near his hometown of Tikrit.

The Dujail case is being tried first because it was the easiest case to prepare, court officials have said. There will be no jury. The court's five judges will question witnesses and render the verdicts.

For security reasons, the judge's identities have not been revealed and might remain concealed during the trial. Juhi will not be among them.

The massacres were in response to a July 8, 1982, assassination attempt staged by villagers at the height of Saddam's power, court officials said. Gunmen opened fire on Saddam's motorcade as he passed through town, but he was unhurt. In swift retaliation, Iraqi army helicopters fired on villagers, and troops rounded up and imprisoned residents. Some are still missing.

The seven other defendants in the Dujail trial includes Saddam's then-intelligence chief, Barazan Ibrahim; his vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan; Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the head of the Revolutionary court; and four senior Baath Party officials in the Dujail region, Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid, Ali Dayim Ali, Mohammed Azawi Ali and Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid.

Source: Charleston Gazette, The

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