Saddam defies court, tussles with guards on first day of trial

AFP Photo Saddam Hussein defiantly speaks to the Presiding Judge Rizgur Ameen Hana Al-Saedi as his trial begins in a heavily fortified courthouse in Baghdad's Green Zone.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Saddam Hussein defied the authority of a US-sponsored Iraqi court set up to judge crimes during his regime, lecturing the judge and tussling with guards before the proceedings were adjourned until late next month.

Facing the first of what could be several cases over atrocities committed during his quarter century in power, the former Iraqi leader refused to answer the court's questions and launched into a sustained tirade over its legitimacy.

"I said what I said, I am not guilty, I am innocent," Saddam told the court after the presiding judge read out the charges over a 1982 massacre of more than 140 Shiite villagers.

If found guilty, Saddam and his co-defendants could be executed. In a televised trial watched across the world, Saddam, 68, described himself as the "president of Iraq" from the metal pen he was sitting in along with seven other of his former cohorts, and repeatedly refused to give his name.

"I don't acknowledge either the entity that authorises you or the aggression because everything based on falsehood is falsehood," said Saddam, dressed in grey suit and open necked suit, and cradling a well-marked Koran in his lap.

"Who are you and what are you?" he demanded of presiding judge Rizkar Mohammed Amin. After several hours that were mainly devoted to procedural matters, Amin adjourned the trial until November 28.

Saddam's lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi -- who has frequently complained of not having time to prepare a defence -- had requested a three-month delay. The session took place in the heart of Baghdad's highly-fortified Green Zone for the hearing, the first time an Arab leader has gone on trial for crimes committed against his own people.

The defendants include Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and a former director of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service, and former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan, one of the regime's "enforcers." "Trial of the Century" trumpeted the headline in Al-Bayan, the mouthpiece of the Shiite Dawa party of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

"Iraqis will finally see their former dictator at the mercy of Iraqi justice." The Iraqi government and its US backers denied the trial was a distraction from the persistent insurgency and other more pressing problems.

"The reason why the country is in such a mess is because one man stole the will of 27 million people for 35 years, and pushed them into wars and misery," said government spokesman Laith Kubba.

US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad hailed the trial as "another momentous step in the building of a new Iraq" that will "will document the evils of the former regime." "We hope this trial will help bring some closure for the Iraqi people to their country's dark past," added White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

The former leader was captured hiding near his hometown of Tikrit in December 2003 after he was toppled in the US-led invasion in April of that year.

Saddam was also involved in a brief off-camera tussle with court guards in paramilitary guards. He resisted when the guards tried to grab his arm to escort him out of the court for a brief recess. Saddam argued with the two men for about 30 seconds before he was allowed to leave unaided. Armed US marshals and Iraqi security patrolled the courthouse, located in a former Baath Party headquarters palace. The 25 journalists covering the trial were subject to full-body X-rays as well as usual exhaustive checks.

Saddam is likely to face subsequent charges over the gassing of 5,000 people in the Kurdish village of Halabja in March 1988; the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, during which around a million people died; the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the violent suppression of a Shiite uprising the following year.

Yet these more high-profile cases have been put aside for a relatively obscure case, in part because the event was well documented. In Dujail, villagers including women clutching pictures of slain relatives, waved banners urging "death for Saddam Hussein".

However in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, the US army and Iraqi police fired in the air to disperse a protest by armed pro-Saddam demonstrators. Iran said it welcomed the opening of Saddam's trial, but called on Iraqi authorities lay more charges, including the bloody 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Human Rights Watch, which exhaustively documented atrocities committed during Saddam's regime, has expressed doubts that the trial will be fair. The US-based group said problems with the tribunal and its statute include the lack of a requirement to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, disputes among Iraqi politicians over court control, and a ban on any commutation of death sentences.

While many Iraqis hailed the trial, his supporters rued the sight of their "humiliated hero." "If Saddam is executed, then all Arab dictators should be. He was actually the least bad," said teacher Raed Ihsan in the smart Baghdad neighbourhood of Karrada.

The trial began just four days after a largely peaceful referendum on a proposed new constitution that lays the foundations for a democratic post-Saddam Iraq. The vote, the second since Saddam was toppled, is widely expected to approve the charter, although election officials say results will not be known for days because of "anomalies."

Three Iraqis were killed in Baghdad, including a senior municipal civil servant shot dead with his driver and a former army officer. And two mortar bombs landed in the Green Zone shortly before the trial, without causing any casualties.

But calls by Saddam's supporters for a wave of attacks around the country was largely ignored. In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said US troops would stay in Iraq until the government was capable to "break the back" of the insurgency, but would not say if they would be out in a decade.

Copyright AFP or Agence France-Presse, 2009.AFP text, photos, graphics and logos shall not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium. AFP shall not be held liable for any delays, inaccuracies, errors or omissions in any AFP content, or for any actions taken in consequence