Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Saddam Hussein's defense committee wants to put U.S. President George W. Bush in the dock to mirror the Baghdad trial of the toppled Iraqi leader over a Shiite massacre, a Jordanian lawyer said Tuesday.

"We shall contact international and Arab lawyer associations and will put forward the proof allowing for a trial of the criminal Bush at the same time as the fake trial takes place in Iraq," Saleh Armouti told a meeting of the Amman-based Saddam defense committee.

If lawyers abroad fail to take the case to court, "we shall organize it in Jordan and will invite international supporters," Armouti said, without specifying on what grounds he wanted to try Bush.

Saddam is currently being tried on charges of murder and torture related to the killing of 148 Shiites from the village of Dujail following a failed attempt on the Iraqi leader's life in July 1982.

Saddam's Iraqi lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi, who arrived in Amman on Tuesday to take part in talks on coordinating strategy for his next court hearing on November 28, did not attend the defense committee meeting.

In a related development, a group of former foreign leaders backing Saddam's defense called for a UN probe into the murder of an attorney working for one of his fellow accused.

An investigation into the murder of Saadoun Janabi was an "urgent necessity," the former foreign leaders and ministers wrote in a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Investigations by Iraqi and U.S. officials into the murder "will have no credibility," said the letter signed by former Algerian President Ahmad Bin Bella, former Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohamad, French former Foreign Minister Roland Dumas and former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark.

Janabi, who was acting for Awad Hamad al-Bandar al-Saadoun, a former chief judge of the revolutionary court and deputy head of Saddam's office, was kidnapped on Thursday and his body was found with bullets to the head dumped in a Baghdad neighborhood.

U.S. and Iraqi leaders "have repeatedly expressed hostility toward the accused persons and both governments have resorted to criminal violence against supporters of the former government of Iraq," the letter said.

The failure of American and Iraqi officials "to provide protection to the defense and access to the defendants requires the transfer of any trials to a legal international forum if there is to be fairness in appearance and fact."

Issam Ghazzawi, a Jordan-based attorney on Saddam Hussein's legal team, said the defense is preparing to formally call on the United Nations to offer protection to lawyers working for Saddam and his co-accused.

Members of the defense team "have received threats, one lawyer was murdered and they do not trust the government or the Americans to protect them," Ghazzawi said in a telephone interview from Amman.

"We cannot expect a fair trial under these circumstances," he said.

In Washington, meanwhile, Bush insisted that Saddam is being treated fairly.

"The key thing is that there will be a fair trial, which is something he didn't give many of the thousands of people he killed," Bush said in a Monday interview with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiyya television network. - AFP