HUSSEIN FOUND GUILTY OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was found guilty of crimes against humanity today, bringing to an end the first trial examining the alleged crimes of the former regime -- a theatrical, yearlong televised odyssey dogged by questions of legitimacy.

Hussein, 69, was sentenced to death by hanging, but capital and life sentences in Iraq are automatically appealed. The nine-judge appellate court begins hearing arguments within a month of the sentence, and could deliberate for an unlimited time -- months or even years. Sentences must be carried out within a month after the final appeal is exhausted.

The ousted president, visibly shaken, chanted: “Long live the people. Long live the Arab nation. Down with the agents. Down with the occupier.” He also said “God is great” over and over again.

Hussein and seven codefendants stood trial for crimes allegedly committed against the Shiite villagers of Dujayl, a small farming town where the former president was the target of a 1982 assassination attempt.

Prosecutors said Hussein oversaw a brutal years-long campaign of collective punishment against the villagers, signing off on the execution of at least 148, rounding up families, locking up suspects in horrific dungeons and banishing women and children to barren desert death camps for years.

The charge of crimes against humanity includes acts of murder, forcible deportation, wrongful imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts.

Awad Hamed Bandar, head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, which issued death sentences against Dujayl residents, including relatives of those accused in assassination attempt, was sentenced to death by hanging.

Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, intelligence chief at time of Dujayl killings and Hussein’s half-brother, was sentenced to death by hanging for murder.

Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was sentenced to life in prison for murder.

Three codefendants, all Baath Party officials in Dujayl region, were sentenced to 15 years for murder and torture: Abdullah Kadhem Ruwayyid, Ali Dayim Ali, and Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid.

The judges acquitted Mohammed Azzawi Ali, a Baath official in Dujayl region, citing insufficient evidence.

The trial, or circus as it sometimes seemed, transfixed Iraqis as controversy swirled around every twist: its opening day when an imperious Hussein declared that he was still president and challenged the legitimacy of “this so-called court,” the slayings of two defense lawyers, the resignation of the chief judge and the naming of a successor, and a hunger strike that led to Hussein’s hospitalization for several days as the end neared.

Hussein is being tried separately on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for the 1980s Anfal campaign against Kurds in the north. That trial began Aug. 21 and is continuing. As many as 100,000 Kurds were killed in the campaign, and Hussein is charged along with six former aides, the most notorious being his cousin Ali Hassan Majid, who earned the nickname Chemical Ali because of his purported sanctioning of the use of internationally banned chemical weapons.

A jittery Iraqi government locked down the capital and surrounding provinces Saturday ahead of the verdict.

Iraqi officials canceled all military leaves, ordered the Baghdad airport closed and imposed an indefinite curfew from 6 a.m. today in the capital and the religiously mixed provinces of Diyala and Salahuddin, home to Hussein’s birthplace and the Shiite Muslim town at the center of his trial.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite who had called for the death penalty in this case, urged Iraqis, known for celebratory gunfire, to mark the outcome with “calmness and discipline in a way that is suitable to the security challenges.”

Hussein’s lawyers and fellow Sunni Muslim Arabs have warned that a guilty verdict could unleash more bloodshed in a country reeling from daily sectarian and insurgent attacks.

In the trial, which began Oct. 19, 2005, and was packed with countless hours of emotional outbursts, tearful testimony and theatrical grandstanding, two fleeting moments speak volumes.

The first came March 13, when lead Judge Raouf Rasheed Abdel Rahman scolded a codefendant for spending only two weeks to try to sentence to death 148 people from Dujayl for their alleged involvement in the 1982 assassination attempt.

“How were you able to try 148 people in two weeks when in this trial it takes three hours to take the statement of one defendant?” Abdel Rahman demanded of former judge Awad Hamed Bandar, one of Hussein’s seven codefendants.

“We were at war,” Bandar said.

To supporters of the Iraqi High Tribunal, the moment threw into sharp relief the contrast between the callous disregard for defendants’ rights during the former regime and the time-consuming trial that Hussein and his deputies received.

The second came May 22, when the judge kicked Lebanese defense lawyer Bushra Khalil out of the courtroom.

“Get your hands off me!” she yelled at the bailiffs as she was ushered out -- a signature moment for the defendants and those who viewed the trial as a sham from its inception.

The presence of Khalil, a Shiite whose relatives had been victimized by Hussein, along with that of other lawyers from Jordan, Qatar and Egypt, served as a reminder that to many in Iraq and the region, the U.S.-backed court put Arab nationalism and pride on trial.

“This was the Iraqi judiciary system,” said lead defense attorney Khalil Dulaimi. “This trial has been a humiliation.”

In January, Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin quit as chief of the trial panel, complaining of Iraqi government pressure on him to rein in the defendants’ outbursts and speed up the trial. His fellow judges chose one of their number, Said Hammashi, to take over. But Hammashi, the most senior member, was unexpectedly removed from the panel two weeks later after a government commission responsible for purging Hussein’s supporters from public office said that he had once belonged to the dictator’s Baath Party.

Abdel Rahman, a 64-year-old Kurd, was appointed new chief judge. In his first day, he imposed order on the chaotic trial, ousting a codefendant and a defense attorney from the courtroom and provoking a walkout by the rest of the defense team. Shouting “Shame on you!” the deposed Iraqi leader then refused court-appointed counsel and was escorted out, followed by two more codefendants who joined him in protest.

Insults, profanity, shouting matches, shoving and gavel-pounding consumed the session’s first half-hour before a visibly agitated Rahman gained control. The trial proceeded without four of the eight defendants and any of their original 13 lawyers.

In July, just before closing defense arguments were about to begin, Hussein collapsed in his jail cell more than two weeks into a hunger strike that had left him gaunt and physically deteriorated. Hussein was hospitalized and treated by U.S. medical personnel. He was fed through a tube. Three days later he returned to court to make his final appearance during the defense arguments, gaunt and pale but with his distinctive impertinence intact. He lashed out at Rahman, his court-appointed lawyers and the U.S. troops who toppled his dictatorship.

Significant segments of the Iraqi population as well as international legal experts have cast doubt on the trial’s neutrality.

Two of the defense lawyers were assassinated during the trial, gunned down in Baghdad under mysterious circumstances. The defense argued that Iraq’s security situation made it an inappropriate venue for the trial. Iraqi and international legal experts have long argued that the trial should have been held in another country.

One U.S. official close to the tribunal acknowledged that the “violent situation has had an impact” on the trial. “No one envisioned the country being in the state it’s in when they started this thing,” the official said.

But, he added, “it wasn’t an issue that rendered the trial irredeemably unfair. No trial is perfect.”

Many Sunni Muslim Arabs in Iraq and the broader Middle East have expressed suspicion about the timing of the verdict, which judges moved from Oct. 16 to two days before hotly contested midterm congressional elections in the United States.

“The American president, Bush, asked for this for a political gain in the elections that will be held in the U.S. this month,” said Mohammed Daini, a member of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni political party in Iraq.

U.S. officials contested the allegation. They pointed out that they had been grumbling about the trial’s slow pace for months, and that they had hoped for a verdict in the spring to allow the special court to focus on the ongoing Anfal trial.

“There’s no way we had that kind of control over these people,” said one U.S. official close to the trial, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This was toxic for us.”

From the start, the two sides battled in different courts -- the physical one and the court of public opinion.

The prosecutors remained in the orderly world of the heavily fortified multistory courthouse here. They focused on the 130 witnesses who gave written and spoken testimony and painstakingly compiled documentary evidence over 40 sessions, as if strict adherence to legal formulas could wash away questions about the legitimacy of a court set up under formal U.S. occupation.

The defense tried to broaden the scope of the trial, playing for the cameras and pan-Arab television with politically charged statements about the U.S. role in Iraq and recent Middle East history, as if questions about the court’s legitimacy could cleanse the mountain of evidence implicating Hussein in the horrific treatment of civilians.

After gunmen fired on the dictator’s motorcade during a July 8, 1982, presidential visit to Dujayl, Hussein and others allegedly conspired to exact revenge on the entire town, rounding up at least 600 men, women and children, submitting some to torture and others to summary executions, while banishing entire families to a barren desert prison for years.

At least 148 people were sentenced to death -- some of them after they had already died under torture, and several of them minors who were executed years later once they reached 18.

In addition, teams of bulldozers leveled the once-abundant orchards of Dujayl, turning a wealthy farming hub into an impoverished backwater.

Hussein himself, in one of the trial’s most dramatic moments, stood up and dismissed his own defense attorney’s attempt to portray the destruction of the orchards as a civic improvement project. He had ordered the destruction as retribution for the assassination attempt, he told the court.

The prosecution presented documentary evidence including official papers showing Hussein’s signature on a death warrant.

Prosecutors had complained that the defense never really addressed the issue of guilt. “They’re not playing to the evidence,” said one U.S. official. “There was never an attempt to defend Saddam on the basis of the evidence.”

borzou@latimes.com

Times staff writer Alexandra Zavis contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The defendants

The eight men charged with crimes against humanity, and their verdicts:

* Former President Saddam Hussein. Sentenced to death by hanging.

* Barzan Ibrahim Hasan: Intelligence chief at time of Dujayl killings and Hussein’s half-brother. Sentenced to death.

* Awad Hamed Bandar: Head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, which issued death sentences against Dujayl residents, including relatives of those accused in assassination attempt. Sentenced to death.

* Taha Yassin Ramadan: Former bank clerk and longtime Hussein aide who was an Iraqi vice president. Sentenced to life in prison.

* Abdullah Kadhem Ruwayyid: Baath Party official in Dujayl region, believed responsible for Dujayl arrests. Sentenced to 15 years in prison.

* Ali Dayim Ali: Baath official in Dujayl region. Sentenced to 15 years in prison.

* Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid: Baath official in Dujayl region. Sentenced to 15 years.

* Mohammed Azzawi Ali: Baath official in Dujayl region. Acquitted for lack of evidence.

Source: Los Angeles Times