Posted on 04/27/2005 5:23:57 PM PDT by wagglebee
AMMAN, Jordan (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein met his lawyer for the first time in four months Wednesday, on the eve of his 68th birthday, the head of the defense team for the former Iraqi president said.
"The president is in good health and good spirits in his illegal captivity," Ziad Khasawneh told Reuters.
Khasawneh said Saddam met for six hours with Khalil al-Duleimi, an Iraqi member of the Jordanian-based defense team hired by his family to defend him against charges including killing thousands of Iraqis.
"Duleimi is on his way back to Amman and we will know more details," said Khasawneh, adding Saddam had not had contact with his lawyers since Duleimi saw him at the end of last year.
"The president will play a major role in setting his defense strategy. We have submitted numerous requests to the tribunal through the Iraqi Bar Association to see him over the past months but they only answered us now," he added.
Saddam has been behind bars since he was captured by U.S. forces in December 2003. He is held in a U.S. prison on the edge of Baghdad.
Duleimi said after meeting Saddam four months ago that the former president denied a U.S. account that he surrendered to U.S. forces when found in a hole near his hometown of Tikrit.
Saddam, a Sunni Arab, faces charges related to crushing Kurdish and Shi'ite revolts.
One of the more specific charges against Saddam accuses him of killing members of the Kurdish Barzani family en masse, as well as a 1988 chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja that killed thousands.
Saddam appeared in front of an investigative judge last year and defended his 1990 invasion of Kuwait as fulfilling a just territorial claim. He said he heard about the Halabja massacre through the media.
The former president was born in 1937 in the Oga village north of Baghdad. He turns 68 Thursday.
Just a few thoughts on this:
1. Saddam isn't the president of anything (except possibly the Iraq chapter of the John sKerry fan club).
2. If this lawyer thinks sending a genocidal dictator to jail is "illegal captivity", he is possibly the world's worst attorney.
3. Hopefully this will be his final birthday.
May it be his last.
I am warmed to the little fuzzy cockles of my heart to hear that he is feeling so well. (There was that sarcastic enough?)
Oh, yeah. That's going to go over real well with the jury.
Hmmm. Which part of that is denied, I wonder?
Does anyone know when his trial is supposed to begin?
Hey , they're just trying to be good attorneys. I imagine they're getting paid a bundle. But they know he's doomed.
It's kind of the same situation as was with Bahgdad Bob, "there are no troops at the airport..."
Saddam and Jane Fonda are almost the same age. Coincidence? I think not. ;-)
Probably a day or two before his scheduled execution.
I hope he feels great till the day he dies. The better he feels, the worse he'll feel at the end.
I doubt he'll be around to blow out the candles next year. LOL
President of the Poor Me Club.....
Ditto.
Intoxicated?
This is the height of absurdity. He is guilty, and there will be no other finding of fact. He should have been unceremoniously hung long ago; it serves no purpose in justice to stretch this out as if there were some shadow of a doubt of his manifest guilt.
We should have his a$$ the first time around 14 yrs ago.
It rankles me that so many of our finest were killed liberating that country from this POS and he's still wasting oxygen. Hang him and get it over with.
I often wonder why dictators like Saddam and Castro always seem to live so long. I guess only the good die young.
Since it's about to be Saddam's birthday, how about giving him a birthday cake with frosting that looks like jail bars?
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