Saddam's stop-start trial goes on without him

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein refused to enter court today, bringing his often chaotic trial to yet another halt until the judge decided to press on without him.

After telling the court to "go to hell" the night before, the former president effectively boycotted the fifth session of his trial after spending most of the day in talks with lawyers in a battle of wills with the Kurdish presiding judge.

Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin eventually opted to push ahead with proceedings and heard testimony from two witnesses before adjourning until December 21 - six days after next week's election for the first full parliament of the post-Saddam era.

Amin said he would use the two-week break to consider a defence motion to review the way evidence was given.

One of Saddam's defence lawyers said Saddam would attend when the court reconvenes after the election, although it was not clear whether the former leader had told him that.

As the witnesses gave their testimony, Saddam's black leather chair stood conspicuously empty at the front of the defendant's penned-in dock in the marbled Baghdad courtroom.

The witnesses, speaking from behind a curtain for fear of their lives, described years of interrogations and abuses they say they suffered in Saddam's jails in the 1980s.

"They told us they wanted to speak to us for 10 minutes," a man identified only as Witness G said, recalling how security forces rounded up people in the Shi'ite town of Dujail in 1982 following a failed attempt to assassinate Saddam.

"We were gone for four and a half years."

Saddam's no-show is the most dramatic twist so far in a trial that has been plagued by delays, the assassination of two attorneys, faulty equipment in court and frequently rambling witness testimony since it opened on Oct. 19.

It has already been adjourned twice - once to allow the defence time to prepare their case and once after the two defence lawyers were shot dead. The latest adjournment had been widely expected because of the election.

Under Iraqi law, which forms the basis of the tribunal's rules in an amalgam with other principles of international law, the trial can continue to its conclusion without Saddam. The court is merely obliged to keep him posted on developments.

In a half-hour session closed to the media, the tribunal's chief investigating judge said Saddam submitted a request to remove himself from court, having complained of his treatment in detention on Tuesday, and it was granted.

While the trial proceeds, his absence will deprive millions of Iraqis of a chance to see their one-time ruler in the dock.

Although many Iraqi and some international observers feel the verdict is a foregone conclusion - Saddam will be hanged - they also say the actual process of trying him could help Iraq move on from the atrocities of his 30-year rule.

With the election looming, the Shi'ite and Kurdish-led government is keen to show the long-oppressed majority community that their former tormentor faces justice.

Saddam and his co-defendants have said their trial is a sham and have repeatedly disrupted it, berating the judge and chief prosecutor and accusing fearful and occasionally incoherent witnesses of lying.

Some Iraqis, particularly from the Sunni Arab minority which enjoyed privileges under Saddam, have complained the Americans and their allies in the Iraqi government are in no position to put him on trial for crimes against humanity.

The moral authority of both the US military and the Shi'ite-dominated government has been called into question by prisoner abuse scandals at Iraqi jails and secret bunkers.

Saddam's half-brother Barzan, a former intelligence chief, complained of his own treatment in jail on Wednesday. He said he had been denied tea and coffee for a year, lost 18kg in weight - and offered only inferior brand cigarettes.

The trial is at heart about the killings of 148 people from Dujail.

Witness F, the eighth person to testify, gave specific if sparse details of a killing that he said he had witnessed in a Baghdad jail, although when asked under cross-examination if he had seen anyone killed in Dujail itself, he replied "No".

Some observers have voiced doubts about the strength of the case, and the judge has instructed some witnesses to focus their testimony. The UN's human rights chief in Iraq says the trial has little prospect of meeting international standards.

At the end of tape-delayed coverage, Iraqiya state television played a montage of scenes of Saddam and his co-defendants heckling in the dock, intercut with images of torture. It ended with a shot of Saddam and Barzan, overlaid with blood-red stains spreading from their throats.

- REUTERS