Defiant Hussein, Co-Defendants Plead Not Guilty, Win Trial Delay

An imperious, defiant Saddam Hussein waged a theatrical struggle to control the opening of his murder trial Wednesday, sparring repeatedly with the chief judge and challenging the legitimacy of the Iraqi court. He and seven former aides then pleaded not guilty and won a 40-day postponement of the proceedings.

“I am the president of Iraq,” the ousted dictator declared from behind a cage-like metal barrier in his former Baath Party headquarters building, which has been converted into a courtroom. “I will not answer to this so-called court.”

The hearing was the first of several expected trials of the deposed dictatorship’s highest officials. The Iraqi High Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor used the three-hour session to spell out his case that Hussein and his co-defendants planned and ordered the revenge killings of 146 people from the town of Dujayl, where a 1982 assassination attempt against Hussein took place.

The former ruler, 68, maneuvered from the start to try to dominate the televised event, playing to an Iraqi populace and a global audience divided over the U.S.-led war that ousted him.

Hussein and the other defendants face execution by hanging if convicted. But court officials say the punishment could be delayed to allow Hussein to stand trial in as many as 11 other cases involving 270 mass graves and tons of documents gathered by government agencies during his rule.

Human rights advocates said the proceedings, if conducted fairly, could send a signal across the world that no man is above the law. But the case may also further stoke animosity between Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority, many of whom are loyal to Hussein, and the ethnic Kurds and Shiite Muslims now leading the country.

The trial could also stir up sectarian tensions across the Middle East, where many Sunni Muslim Arabs still support and defend Hussein and Sunni-led governments are suspicious of Iraq’s new authorities and their relationship with Shiite-dominated Iran.

The lead judge in the case, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, adjourned the trial until Nov. 28 to study defense motions centering on four issues: the lack of time defense attorneys say they have had to review the evidence; the alleged failure of U.S. and Iraqi officials to allow the lawyers to consult with their clients often enough; the anonymity of some prosecution witnesses; and the legitimacy of the tribunal, which was set up under U.S. occupation in 2003.

Hussein’s lawyer Khalil Dulaimi had sought a delay of three months.

The question of its legitimacy hung over the court from the outset of the session. Tradition calls for all to rise when judges enter an Iraqi courtroom, but the judges feared a rebuff by the defendants and entered the marble-lined chambers first.

The building in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a government enclave, was ringed with 10-foot concrete barriers, U.S. and Iraqi troops, several Humvees and at least one tank.

Amin, a silver-haired Kurd in a black robe with white trim, presided from a U-shaped dais looking down on the defendants, who sat in three rows of black leather chairs surrounded by waist-high metal bars.

He ran the hearing with the tone of an imperturbable schoolmaster, striving for fairness while enduring a series of unruly disruptions by defendants and their lawyers.

Iraqis watching on television, with a 30-minute delay of the signal from the courtroom, were transfixed.

For the 24 years of his rule, Hussein used brutality to keep his people in line and television to keep them in thrall. Whereas many of those who endured repression during that period awaited the trial as a humbling moment for a man who once ruled their lives, the former president clearly relished it as a chance to perform.

He seized the stage minutes after Amin declared the court in session.

Rising from his seat in the front row, Hussein opened a Koran and started to read a passage that says: “Men said to them: ‘A great army is gathering against you.’ And frightened them. But it [only] increased their Faith.” Amin cut him off and asked the former dictator to identify himself by writing down his name.

Hussein replied, “First of all, who are you and what are you?”

“The Iraqi criminal court,” said Amin, flanked by four associate judges who remained silent, anonymous and off camera.

“All of you are judges?” the defendant persisted, speaking calmly and staring straight ahead.

Ignoring the question, Amin asked Awad Hamed Bandar, the defendant seated to Hussein’s right, to identify himself.

“I was robbed of my identity,” replied the former chief judge of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, a Baath Party tribunal that operated outside the established legal system. An official, he explained, had ordered him and three other defendants to leave their traditional Arab headdresses outside the courtroom. Bandar loudly demanded them back.

The judge granted the request, and the defendants put on the garments with great display.

In other rows of the dock sat Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, deputy head of the secret police in 1982 and Hussein’s half-brother; Taha Yassin Ramadan, an Iraqi vice president; and four party officials in Dujayl -- Abdullah Kadhem Ruwayyid and his son, Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid; Ali Dayim Ali; and Mohammed Azzawi Ali.

Six defendants wore Arab dishdashas. The younger Ruwayyid wore a blue prison jumpsuit. Hussein, sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, wore a dark gray suit and an open-collared white shirt. He walked slowly and seemed thinner than he was in pretrial hearings.

But he appeared calmly confident, smiling at times. During breaks when the defendants were allowed to mingle, he joked and chatted with his former aides. They treated him with deference; at one point, Ramadan leaned forward and kissed the back of Hussein’s head.

When a guard tried to guide Hussein by the arm during one break, the defendant pulled back and said: “I am the president. You cannot grab me like that.”

Hussein took the lead in defying the court, refusing again later in the hearing to answer the chief judge’s question: “Who are you?”

“You know who I am,” the former ruler said. “And you know I don’t get tired.”

“These are formalities,” Amin said. “We need to hear it from you.”

“I reserve my constitutional rights as the president of Iraq,” Hussein replied. He added: “I don’t recognize the body that has designated and authorized you, nor the aggression. All that has been built on falsehood is false.”

Later, when the judge entered his name in the record as “Saddam Hussein ... former president of Iraq,” the defendant raised a finger and said testily, “I did not say ‘former’ president.”

His attitude seemed to embolden the other defendants and their 13 lawyers. Defense attorneys disrupted the proceedings often, complaining that much of the prosecution’s evidence came from nameless witnesses and that the government was interfering in the court’s work by pressing for quick convictions.

Azzawi Ali, after identifying himself as a farmer, harangued the bench, saying he had just met his court-appointed lawyer. “What are the charges against me?” he demanded. “I have done nothing.”

Eventually, the judge informed the defendants that the charges included murder, torture and forced expulsion, and asked them to plead.

“I have said what I said, and I am not guilty,” Hussein declared. One by one, the others pleaded likewise.

The Iraqi High Criminal Court -- set up, financed and advised by U.S. officials -- will apply Iraqi criminal procedure and international law governing crimes against humanity.

The chief prosecutor, Jaafar Mousawi, said the court chose to begin with the Dujayl case because it would be relatively straightforward to prosecute. But he used Wednesday’s session to give an overview of what he called Hussein’s “horrific crimes.”

Two million Iraqis, he said, were killed in “unreasonable wars” against Iran and Kuwait or executed to silence dissent under a sedition law that was “a sword hanging over the heads of the Iraqi people.”

“This is a historic day in which the people of Iraq and human conscience have triumphed,” he said.

Defense lawyers cut him off, insisting that he stick to the charges related to the killings in Dujayl.

Mousawi outlined the prosecution’s version of what happened after Hussein dodged bullets fired on his convoy on July 8, 1982, in the Shiite market town 40 miles north of Baghdad.

The prosecutor said that after the shooting, Hussein returned to the capital and set in motion a collective punishment of the town. Mousawi gave this account:

Hussein assigned Hasan to send Republican Guards and intelligence agents to Dujayl to round up 687 residents with help from local Baath Party officials. Of those, 399 old people, women and children were sent to spend several years in a desert fort near the Saudi border.

Then, 148 prisoners were sent to a detention center in Baghdad and tortured: 46 died there and 100 were tried in absentia by Bandar’s Revolutionary Court and hanged after Hussein signed the execution orders. The other two were sent to the fort.

Hussein ordered promotions and bonus pay for security agents involved in the operation and signed an order to confiscate the detainees’ farms under Ramadan’s direction. “We have all these documents,” the prosecutor said.

Hussein cocked his head and rubbed his right eye as Mousawi spoke, at one point interjecting, “This is a lie.” Azzawi Ali bent over and sobbed in his hands.

The drama played out before a visitors gallery that included Iraqi national security advisor Mowaffak Rubaie, deputy parliament speaker Hussein Shahristani and other national leaders, as well as international observers.

The arguments in court echoed across Iraq.

“It’s just like a show trial,” said Amnar Minaf Jorani, 28, who watched from the central Baghdad currency exchange, where he works. “It’s being conducted by the occupier.”

“The day we’ll be happy is the day we’ll see him executed,” said Duradid Khalid, 36, who works at the same exchange.

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Times staff writers Caesar Ahmed and Shamil Aziz contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

On trial

A list of defendants in the trial that started Wednesday concerning the 1982 massacre of nearly 150 Shiite Muslims in Dujayl, Iraq:

* Saddam Hussein: Undisputed ruler of Iraq from 1979 until ouster in April 2003 after U.S.-led invasion. Captured Dec. 14, 2003. Failed assassination attempt against him in Dujayl allegedly triggered bloody reprisal at heart of trial.

* Barzan Ibrahim Hasan: Intelligence chief at time of Dujayl killings and Hussein’s half-brother. Managed Hussein’s Swiss bank accounts in Geneva, 1988-95. Captured April 16, 2003.

* Taha Yassin Ramadan: Former bank clerk and longtime Hussein aide who was an Iraqi vice president. Captured Aug. 20, 2003.

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

* Abdullah Kadhem Ruwayyid: Baath Party official in Dujayl region, believed responsible for Dujayl arrests.

* Ali Dayim Ali: Baath official in Dujayl region.

* Mohammed Azzawi Ali: Baath official in Dujayl region.

* Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid: Baath official in Dujayl region and son of fellow defendant Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid.

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Associated Press

Los Angeles Times