Saddam and defence team boycott trial

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein and four co-accused refused to show up in court on Wednesday along with their defence team in protest against the new chief judge, plunging their trial deeper into chaos.

Raouf Abdel Rahman said he would go ahead without them and court-appointed lawyers replaced Saddam's team in proceedings that have been dominated by the toppled Iraqi leader's tirades.

"Despite my personal efforts with the defendants to have them present, they refused," said chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Musawi, who urged the judge to force the defendants to attend.

The trial was adjourned until Thursday after testimony from five prosecution witnesses, all of whom gave testimony from behind a curtain to hide their identities.

"Inside the intelligence building they hung me by my feet from the ceiling and I was naked," said one woman, who directly implicated Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's former head of intelligence.

"They beat me and used electric shock on me. Barzan hit me on the chest and broke my ribs and the marks are still clear."

Saddam's legal team accuses Abdel Rahman of bias and rushing to hand down a sentence and says they will not return until the judge resigns. Saddam faces hanging if he is found guilty of crimes against humanity.

Abdel Rahman is from the Kurdish town of Halabja, where 5,000 people, including some of his relatives, were gassed to death by Saddam's army in 1988. Saddam says Halabja was attacked because it was overrun by Iranian forces in a war between the two countries.

Abdel Rahman has taken a personal interest in helping Halabja heal, forming committees to help its distraught residents recover. Some observers wonder if a Kurdish judge can show impartiality in trying Saddam, who is accused of ordering the killing of many thousands of Kurds.

"We cannot attend any trial session unless the chief judge resigns, because he holds a personal grudge against my client," Saddam's chief counsel, Khalil al-Dulaimi, told Reuters in the Jordanian capital Amman before the hearing began.

JUDGE STANDS FIRM

Abdel Rahman, who has infuriated Saddam and his defence team with his stern approach, is trying to take control of a trial marred by delays since getting under way last October.

Two members of the defence team have been murdered, chief judge Rizgar Amin resigned complaining of government interference, and his original replacement was shifted aside after being accused of belonging to Saddam's Baath party.

The trial has turned into a test of wills since Abdel Rahman began presiding over proceedings on Sunday.

"After what happened ... the defence team was confronted with only one choice -- the boycott of a court that has no legitimacy, (is) unconstitutional and has already taken a prior decision to convict the president," Dulaimi said.

The open hearing began three hours late with just three of the eight defendants, minor Baath party officials, present, after a closed session to discuss procedural issues.

Saddam, who still calls himself the president of Iraq, faces charges of killing 148 men from the Shi'ite town of Dujail after a bid to assassinate him there in 1982. His seven co-defendants face the same charges.

The Dujail case was raised in court first because it was meant to offer clear evidence linking Saddam to crimes against humanity that would lead to a quick conviction.

Another witness recalled how Saddam's soldiers detained her husband, brother and two nieces in Dujail, a village north of Baghdad. She said she had not seen them since that day.

"I need to have their bodies," she said.

Such testimony has been overshadowed by Saddam's trademark defiance as he slammed the court as an illegitimate creation of US occupiers.

Proceedings collapsed into chaos moments after resuming on Sunday, when he and his defence team stormed out and guards dragged Barzan out of the courtroom after he called the trial "a daughter of a whore".

- REUTERS