Iraq's president says
Saddam Hussein has confessed to killings and other
"crimes" committed during his regime, including the
massacre of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s.
President Jalal Talabani told Iraqi television that
he had been informed by an investigating judge that
"he was able to extract confessions from Saddam's
mouth" about crimes "such as executions" which the
ousted leader had personally ordered.
Asked about specific examples, Talabani, a Kurd,
replied "Anfal", the codename for the 1987-88
campaign which his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
maintains led to the deaths of about 182,000 Kurds
and the destruction of "dozens of Kurdish villages".
Those villages included Halabja, where thousands of
Kurdish villagers were gassed in 1988.
However, Abdel Haq Alani, a legal consultant to
Saddam's family said Saddam did not mention any
confession when he met his Iraqi lawyer on Monday.
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President : Jalal Talabani
(Mam Jalal)
Former dictator
Saddam Hussein
Photo : AP
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"Is this
the fabrication of Talabani or what? Let's not have
a trial on TV. Let the court of law, not the media,
make its ruling on this," Alani said.
Saddam faces his first trial on October 19 for his
alleged role in another atrocity - the 1982 massacre
of Shiites in Dujail, a town north of Baghdad,
following an assassination attempt there against
him.
The Iraqi Special Tribunal has decided to conduct
trials on separate alleged offences rather than lump
them all together in a single proceeding.
Saddam could face the death penalty if convicted in
the Dujail case, the only one referred to trial so
far.
Saddam's legal team said it plans to challenge the
starting date as allowing insufficient time for a
proper defence. Defence lawyers also said they would
challenge the trial's legitimacy.
www.thisislondon.co.uk
Iraq president says Saddam should hang "20 times"
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein has
confessed to crimes and should be hanged "20 times",
his successor as Iraq's president said on Tuesday
while confirming that he will not sign a death
warrant himself.
"Saddam deserves a death sentence 20 times a day
because he tried to assassinate me 20 times," Jalal
Talabani said in a lengthy interview on Iraqiya
state television, recalling his own days as a
Kurdish rebel leader fighting the Baghdad
authorities.
Saddam had confessed to crimes, he said in answer to
a question, though it was not clear what details
Talabani had of a legal process that is intended to
be separate from Iraqi politics.
"There are 100 reasons to sentence Saddam to death,"
he said, two days after the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led
government confirmed that the deposed leader will go
on trial on Oct. 19, along with several aides,
accused of killing 143 Shi'ite villagers after a
failed assassination bid at Dujail in 1982.
Last week, Iraq hanged the first three criminals to
be sentenced to death since Saddam's overthrow by
U.S. forces.
In that case, too, Talabani refused to sign the
warrant but handed responsibility to his Shi'ite
vice president, Adel Abdel Mehdi. He explained his
stance by saying that as leader of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan he had once signed up his
left-wing party to an international ban on capital
punishment.
"My not signing does not mean that I will block the
decision of the court," Talabani said, while
stressing that political pressure would play no part
in the judges' decision.
Saddam's main lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, complained
after meeting his client on Monday that the Oct. 19
trial date had not been agreed through the Special
Tribunal set up to try Saddam and his closest
associates.
"Setting a date for the trial within days, weeks or
months is unacceptable because the court alleges
that it has 36 tonnes of documents and the defence
team cannot come to the trial without studying what
the court has of evidence," Dulaimi told Reuters on
Monday after he had met Saddam near Baghdad.
SENSITIVE TIMING
It seems likely, however, that Saddam will go on
trial on Oct. 19. The process, for the killings at
Dujail, will therefore start days after a referendum
on a new constitution that the U.S.-backed
authorities intend should bury his legacy.
The trial may stir passions among some minority
Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq under Saddam and
before.
For that reason, the timing of the trial has been
sensitive.
The timing of any conviction and sentencing, and
indeed execution, may be similarly affected by a
parliamentary election due in December. One official
involved in the process forecast the trial would
last weeks rather than months.
He also said recently that Saddam might be executed
if convicted only of the killings at Dujail, so that
further trials might never take place.
The Iraqi government, reflecting a popular mood,
seems keen on dispatching the former leader quickly,
hence the choice of the relatively small Dujail case
to begin the process.
Prosecutors have said Saddam's direct responsibility
for the deaths at Dujail may be easier to prove than
in larger cases involving alleged genocide of
Shi'ites and Kurds.
The trial, much of which officials have said will
probably be televised, will be held in a specially
prepared building inside the fortified Green Zone
government compound on the Tigris -- once Saddam's
presidential palace complex.
Reuters
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