BAGHDAD, 8 December 2005 — Saddam Hussein refused to enter court for his trial yesterday, bringing the often chaotic proceedings to a halt before the judge decided to press on with the televised hearing without him.
After telling the court to “go to hell” the night before, the former dictator boycotted what would have been the fifth session of the trial and spent most of the day in talks with lawyers and a battle of wills with the Kurdish presiding judge.
Judge Rizgar Amin eventually opted to push ahead with proceedings and heard testimony from two more witnesses before adjourning the trial until Dec. 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 defense motion to review the way evidence was being given.
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.
Saddam No-Show
Saddam’s no-show is the most dramatic twist so far in a trial that has been plagued by delays, faulty equipment and rambling testimony since it opened on Oct. 19.
It has already been adjourned twice — once to allow the defense time to prepare their case and once after two defense 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.
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.
Saddam’s half-brother Barzan, his then intelligence chief, complained of his treatment in jail. He said he had been denied tea and coffee for a year, lost 18 kg (40 lb) in weight and offered only inferior brand cigarettes.
Meanwhile, gunmen ambushed a hospital yesterday to free a detainee held over a plot to murder a judge investigating Saddam Hussein.
Three policemen were killed when around 20 gunmen stormed the main hospital in the northern oil center of Kirkuk to free one of 12 people arrested over a plot to assassinate chief investigating judge Raed Juhi.
“They freed the detainee after opening fire on the policemen guarding his room. Three of them were killed and six wounded,” said Captain Salam Abdel Qader, in charge of security at the hospital.
The suspect belonged to an Islamist cell linked to Al-Qaeda that had planned to murder Juhi but was smashed by police.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi court sentenced four foreign Arabs accused of committing attacks for Al-Qaeda to life in prison.
The defendants — from Algeria, Jordan and Syria — entered Iraq illegally and committed crimes “ranging from murder and terrorism to possession of illegal weapons,” a government statement said.
The US military charges that one of them, Abu Talha, also known as Mohammed Khalaf Shakar, was a top aide to the Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
Elsewhere, Abu Qatada, dubbed Al-Qaeda’s spiritual head in Europe, called from his prison cell for the release of four foreign Christian peace campaigners kidnapped in Iraq, in a video message broadcast yesterday.
“I am your brother Abu Qatada, Omar bin Mahmud Abu Omar, who is imprisoned in Britain,” said Abu Qatada in a short clip on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television station and its rival Doha-based Al-Jazeera.
“I urge my brothers... the Brigades of the Swords of Right in Iraq... to release them in line with the principle of mercy of our religion, if there was no compelling religious duty against it,” he said.
Four members of the Christian Peacemakers Teams non-governmental organization were abducted in Baghdad on Nov. 26 by a group which has threatened to kill them unless all detainees in US and Iraqi prisons are freed.
The four are Canadians James Loney, 41 and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32; US national Tom Fox, 54, and Briton Norman Kember, 74.
Abu Qatada, a Palestinian-born cleric with Jordanian nationality, was arrested on Aug. 11 among 10 foreigners on suspicion of causing a threat to national security in Britain.