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BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister said Saddam Hussein could be hanged by the end of the year after being sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.
The toppled leader returned to court on Wednesday to hear Kurdish witnesses in a second trial describe what prosecutors say was a campaign of genocide.
Saddam was convicted on Sunday of the killings of 148 Shi'ite villagers from Dujail after a failed assassination bid in 1982. The case for genocide against Kurds in 1988 is still hearing prosecution evidence and could last well into next year.
Defence lawyers in the Dujail case have 30 days to make submissions to the appeals court, which then reviews the documents in the case and makes its decision.
One observer of the court cited sources inside the Tribunal as saying an appeal ruling could be timed for some point next year to coincide with the end of the genocide trial so Kurds too would feel their grievances had been heard.
But in an interview with the BBC shown on Wednesday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who heads a Shi'ite- and Kurdish-dominated government, indicated it could be much sooner.
"The law gives a month for the appeal process and then gives a month for the implementation of the sentence after the decision is taken. And I think the court is determined to pursue this case that they are looking at, but we will not interfere," Maliki said, according to a BBC translation of his remarks.
The prime minister, a Shi'ite Islamist, said last month Saddam's execution could not come soon enough, fuelling charges by international human rights groups of political interference.
"We're waiting for the decision of the appeal court and if the appeal court confirms this sentence it will be the government's responsibility," Maliki said, adding that no outside influence would change the decision.
"This is an Iraqi issue, it's an Iraqi matter," he said.
Asked to specify when he expected Saddam to hang, Maliki said: "I expect it to happen before the end of the year."
Saddam's chief lawyer said Maliki's comments were "further proof of the blatant political influences and intervention that have dominated the trial from day one."
"It just confirms ... that this is a political court which is a creature of the US occupiers and seeks revenge rather than delivering justice," Khalil al-Dulaimi told Reuters.
Maliki, a member of the majority Muslim Shi'ite community persecuted under Saddam's Sunni-dominated rule, said after the verdict was announced Saddam had got "what he deserved".
"The history of Saddam makes it enough for him to be judged just after confirming his name," he told the BBC.
At Wednesday's hearing in the Anfal (Spoils of War) case for a campaign against Kurds, the court heard a 64-year-old Kurdish woman named Asia Tahir describe how she went to a neighbouring village in August 1988 to bring the bride back for a wedding, only to find the village bombed with poison gas.
She and her family fled their homes and Iraqi soldiers burned the village as they hid in the mountains.
They turned themselves in after being promised safety but were detained at a fortress where the men were beaten and taken away, never to be seen again, she said.
"I demand compensation for the blood of my son and husband," said Tahir, wearing a scarf decorated with Kurdish flags.
The court later adjourned until November 27.
- REUTERS
