Posted on 06/30/2004 4:46:00 AM PDT by kattracks
BAGHDAD, June 30 (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein, who brutalised Iraqis for decades, said good morning and sought to ask some questions when the United States handed him over to Iraqi justice on Wednesday, a witness said.Saddam, who was captured hiding near his hometown of Tikrit in December, looked in good health as he appeared before an Iraqi judge in the first legal step towards a trial for the cruelties he inflicted during his 35 years of power.
"Saddam said good morning and asked if he could ask some questions," Salem Chalabi, a lawyer leading the work of a tribunal that will try the former dictator, told Reuters.
"He was told he should wait until tomorrow," said Chalabi, who was in the courtroom where Saddam and 11 of his former lieutenants were turned over to Iraqi legal custody.
But many of the other former Iraqi officials were nervous and agitated, said Chalabi, who has received numerous death threats since taking on the task of helping amass evidence against Saddam and preparing a special tribunal to try him.
Saddam, 67, is accused by Iraqis of torturing and killing hundreds of thousands of people with the help of officials in his Baath party. Saddam became president in 1979, but had already been Iraq's strongman since a Baathist coup in 1968.
His former lieutenants appeared nervous and some were hostile as they were told they would be charged on Thursday.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his role in poison gas attacks, including one that killed about 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in 1988, appeared especially rattled.
"He looked very scared. He was shaking," said Chalabi.
Saddam will remain in the physical custody of U.S. forces. He and the 11 others are to be charged on Thursday.
Saddam fled when U.S. forces entered Baghdad on April 9 last year after making a final defiant public appearance near a mosque in the capital. He was then filmed, looking disoriented, unkempt and with a bushy beard, as U.S. military doctors examined him after his capture on December 13.
Among others to be handed over were former Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz; Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and adviser; Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, his secretary; Sabawi Ibrahim, Saddam's maternal half-brother; Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and adviser; and Aziz Salih Numan, Baath Party regional commander and head of the party militia.
These men and others among the 55 most wanted Iraqis on a U.S. list are seen as witnesses who could help prove a chain of command linking Saddam to crimes against humanity.
Saddam will be charged with ordering the 1988 massacres of Kurds, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, according to Chalabi.
Thats why its a good thing he is in the hands of the Iraqis.
Outside US jurisdiction.
"I've never heard anything about a fatal disease. Unless you're counting the gallows, guillotine or firing squads as diseases."
You left out excedrin headache number .357
***Saddam needs to seek a change of venue.***
You mean somewhere under the US 9th Circuit court jurisdiction?
Of course.
Does anyone know if there was any video of today's hearing?
What on earth makes you think this? Based on this week's Supreme Court rulings, any enemy combatant in U.S. custody can now have access to U.S. courts.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his role in poison gas attacks, including one that killed about 5,000 Iraqi Kurds
Ha!! Start off by handing that guy over to the Kurds, lock stock and anus....
Then the rest will know the Iraqi gov't. means business.
Good thought. Many voters, once married to Home Despots, would relate.
Ha Ha
Serves ya right you bastard...
For sure..
a logic free zone.
A) Saddam is not is US custody.
B) Iraq is not US territory.
C) The jurisdiction of a Circuit Court of Appeals is geographic. A lawyer can't just appeal to whichever circuit he feels like. The 9th Circuit doesn't even have appealate jurisdiction over Iowa, let alone Iraq.
The Questions by Saddam:
1. Is Kerry President yet?
2. Why aren`t Kerrys French blood brothers coming to rescue me? Don`t tell me they`ve surrendered again
3. Is Al Qaida getting their soulmates the Democrats to protest Bush enough?
Wasn't it Goebbels who killed his kids?
Correct. He was the Propaganda Minister- Hitler's Michael Moore
He would have been Reichsfuerer if Hitler hadn't come along.
Heinrich Himmler *was* the Reichsfuhrer, and commanded the SS. Hitler was just 'Fuehrer'.
Himmler was assasinated by partisans.
You're thinking of Reinhard Heydrich, every bit the poisonous little cuss that Hitler and Himmler were. He was assassinated by Czech Partisans and British operatives, IIRC. The town of Lidice was obliterated along with its population in reprisal.
Himmler, after ineptly attempting to command the Waffen SS himself, was captured by the British Army. He had a Cyanide capsule secreted on his person, which he used. I seem to remember seeing a post-mortem photograph of him, he was incongrously dressed in sterile British battledress. Looked kind of odd.
/History Geek Mode
But this business of non-citizen enemy combatants being allowed access to U.S. courts turns hundreds of years of case law and common law on its head.
It also has the potential to stick us taxpayers with the cost, because defendants who can't afford a lawyer get provided one at taxpayers' expense in our system. That really infuriates me, because I'm being asked to pay for the defense of someone who would kill me in a heartbeat if given the chance.
Once again our broadcast media has completely blown any claim to being responsible. They were in such a hurry to tell the American public that the decisions were a big defeat for President Bush. But they couldn't spare much, if any, time informing the public that they — the public — will now have to foot the bill for lawyers for our enemies. If the public really understood that ruling, I have to hope there would be a huge outcry and backlash.
The ghosts of those he murdered have him rattled. He needs the lawyers that OJ had so they can blame it on the police. And he needs a prosecuting attorney like Marcia Clark who thought she knew how to explain DNA to a jury of idiots.
"He looked very scared. He was shaking," said Chalabi.
Ah, squirming magots. Oh, they can act brave when they pry money and welfare from people and kill for sports, but all in all, begging cowardly welfare imploring threatening mother fcrs all of them.
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