World News

Hussein puts up fight at trial

BAGHDAD (AP) - Saddam Hussein pleaded innocent to charges of premeditated murder and torture Oct. 19, as his trial opened under heavy security in the former headquarters of his Baath Party.

Saddam and seven former members of his regime could face the death penalty if convicted over the 1982 massacre of nearly 150 Shiites in the town of Dujail.

Earlier, at the opening of the trial, the 68-year-old ousted Iraqi leader stood and asked the presiding judge: "Who are you? I want to know who you are."

"I do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect to its people, and I retain my constitutional right as the president of Iraq," he said. "Neither do I recognize the body that has designated and authorized you, nor the aggression, because all that has been built on false basis is false."

The judge, a Kurd, tried to get Saddam to formally identify himself but Saddam refused and finally sat. The judge read his name for him, calling him the "former president of Iraq," bringing a protest from Saddam, who insisted he was still in the post.

"I said I'm the president of Iraq," Saddam snapped back. "I did not say former."

The panel of five judges will both hear the case and give a verdict in what could be the first of several trials of Saddam for atrocities carried out during his 23-year-rule.

These atrocities include the Anfal Operation, a military crackdown on the Kurds in the late 1980s that killed some 180,000 people; the suppression of Kurdish and Shiite revolts in 1991; and the deaths of 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 poison gas attack on the village of Halabja.

Shukan ST: Oct. 28, 2005

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