Saddam trial defense lawyer killed

By Lutfi Abu Oun and Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Gunmen killed a second defense lawyer
acting in Saddam Hussein’s trial for crimes against humanity on
Tuesday, renewing questions over whether the former president
can get a fair trial amid Iraq’s daily violence.

Another defense lawyer was slightly wounded in the attack
on their car in Baghdad, police and defense team sources said.

The shooting followed the murder of another defense lawyer
who was shot the day after the televised start of proceedings
on October 19. It stoked controversy about whether the
high-profile trial should be delayed or moved abroad.

The defense team, which had already threatened to boycott
the next hearing on November 28 unless measures are taken to
protect them, said a fair trial was impossible in current
circumstances.

In the latest attack, Adil al-Zubeidi was killed and his
colleague Thamer Hamoud al-Khuzaie was wounded when their car,
a plain red saloon, came under fire in the western Baghdad
district of Hay al-Adil, police and defense team sources said.

Both men were on a team defending Saddam’s half-brother
Barzan al-Tikriti and former Vice-President Taha Yassin
Ramadan, legal sources said.

In last month’s attack, Saadoun al-Janabi, representing
another of the eight defendants, was kidnapped from his office
and shot by men who local people said identified themselves as
Interior Ministry employees on October 20, the day after the
lawyer’s court appearance at the start of the trial.

Khuzaie was among lawyers who appeared on the same bench
with Janabi in the trial, lawyers who know both men said.

DEFENDING “DEVIL”

“There can be no fair trial without providing security for
witnesses, judges and lawyers on an equal footing. No trial can
take place in such conditions,” Issam Ghazzawi, a spokesman for
Saddam’s Jordan-based defense team, told Reuters in Amman.

Nicole Choueiry, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International in
London, said: “The safety of these people is very important if
the trial is to go on. It is the responsibility of the Iraqi
government and the U.S. military to provide protection.

“These people are risking their lives,” she added.

Thabit Fahad, a senior lawyer in Baghdad, said the entire
judicial system was at risk from such attacks: “A lawyer wants
to defend his client even if he is the Devil himself. That is
his job and the nature of his profession.”

The government has denied involvement in Janabi’s death but
the killing renewed accusations of sectarian violence involving
government forces and pro-government Shi’ite militias ranged
against Saddam’s fellow minority Sunni Arabs.

One of the reasons the judge gave for adjourning the trial
last month was that witnesses had been too scared to turn up.

Human rights organizations have expressed concern about the
safety of all concerned in the trial. Only one of the five
judges in the trial has been identified or seen in public.

IRAQI FORCES HIT

Bomb attacks aimed at Iraqi security forces killed at least
nine people on Tuesday as violence continued unabated just over
five weeks before a December 15 election that Washington hopes
will set Iraq more firmly on the road to peace and democracy.

Four Iraqi soldiers were killed and a fifth critically
wounded when a bomb blew up near their patrol car in the small
town of Dali Abbas, northeast of Baghdad, police said.

Another bomb targeted a police patrol in Daquq, near
Kirkuk, killing two policemen and wounding three, police said.

Another policeman was killed in Baquba, north of Baghdad,
and a bomb blast killed a security forces colonel and his
brother in the southern city of Basra.

On Monday a suicide bomber killed four U.S. soldiers and an
Iraqi translator at a checkpoint near Baghdad in one of the
deadliest single attacks on U.S. forces in recent weeks.

In western Iraq near the Syrian border, Operation Steel
Curtain entered its fourth day with Marines and Iraqi troops
pushing through the dusty town of Qusayba in search of al Qaeda
insurgents. The U.S. military says it has killed 36 rebels so
far in the operation and has lost one U.S. Marine dead.

Operation Steel Curtain is the latest in a series of
offensives aimed at securing western Iraq against Sunni Arab
insurgents and foreign fighters before the election.

Sectarian tensions are dominating campaigning for the poll,
in which Sunni Arabs are expected to vote in large numbers for
the first time since the fall of Saddam in April 2003.

(Additional reporting by Aref Mohammed in Kirkuk, Faris al-
Mehdawi in Baquba, Paul Tait, Mussab Al-Khairalla, Mariam
Karouny, Claudia Parsons, Alastair Macdonald and Ahmed Rashid
in Baghdad, Abdel-Razzak Hameed in Basra and Suleiman
al-Khalidi in Amman)