Hussein co-defendant's lawyer dead

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An attorney for a co-defendant of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was found shot in the head shortly after he was kidnapped by gunmen, police said.

Sadoon Janabi was working in his office in Baghdad when five gunmen stormed in and abducted him, according to police.

Officers said his body was found between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Thursday near Firdous Mosque in the Banook neighborhood of northern Baghdad, but it was not officially identified until Friday morning.

Janabi had been representing Awad Hamad Bandar, the former chief judge of Hussein's Revolutionary Court.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO143008.htm

Men in suits took slain Saddam trial lawyer-witnesses
21 Oct 2005 12:40:29 GMT

By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD, Oct 21 - A defence lawyer in the Saddam Hussein trial was dragged from his office by men who identified themselves as Interior Ministry employees before he was found shot dead, witnesses said on Friday.

The bullet-riddled body of Saadoun Janabi, an old friend of the former Iraqi dictator, was found about an hour after his abduction on Thursday night, police said.

Witnesses interviewed near Janabi's small Baghdad office said gunmen burst into the building on Thursday, about two hours after the breaking of the daytime fast which marks the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"We tried to help him but the gunmen told us to get away. They said they were from the Interior Ministry," said Mohammed Ibrahim, who works in the area.

Several witnesses said more than a dozen heavily armed men in suits and ties entered Janabi's office around 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) and dragged him into a car in the rundown Shaab district of Baghdad.

The witness accounts could not be independently verified, while an Interior Ministry spokesman said he had no information on the attack.

The ministry has repeatedly denied allegations from minority groups including some Sunni Arabs that it sanctions Shi'ite militia hit squads.

A senior government official strongly denied any involvement in the murder and said it stood ready to increase already tight security for the trial.

"Those suggestions are ridiculous and baseless. The government does not condone attacks against minorities and former figures in Saddam's Baath Party," national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told Reuters.

The government spokesman and senior diplomats in Baghdad have conceded, however, that there have been problems with armed, pro-government groups acting as vigilantes against minorities.

STRUCK OVER THE HEAD

Witnesses said the abduction was fast and efficient.

"They hit him over the head with their rifle butts," said Qusay Kamel, another witness, who works in a furniture shop beside Janabi's office building. "He didn't say anything."

Janabi was representing Awad al-Bander, a former top Iraqi judge who appeared in court with Saddam and six other men on Wednesday at the start of their trial on charges stemming from the killing of more than 140 Shi'ite men in the 1980s.

The bloody end of Janabi's professional career, which included a job in the Interior Ministry before Saddam became president, came one day after he stood up in court and complained the government was driving the trial.

He worked out of a shabby office even though he landed a case that gripped the world.

A former official in Saddam's Baath party who was purged in the late 1970's like many others, Janabi focused his energy on his law practice in a poor area, where old posters of an Iraqi singer who has lived abroad for years hang on shops.

Neighbourhood residents described Janabi as an elderly man who kept to himself, usually just waving as he climbed the stairs to his first-floor office advertised by a small, dusty sign on the front of the building.

Residents said his son, a policeman, had urged Janabi to avoid the Saddam trial because it would be too dangerous.

As they stood around pondering Janabi's abduction, residents said it was too risky to speak in Iraq, where suicide bombings, shootings and sectarian revenge killings have generated talk of civil war.

"It is better not to talk, I can't say things because he could be a Baathist and he can't say anything because I may be against him," said a resident, pointing to someone next to him.

Just down the street a fading "USA Is Good" slogan was daubed on a wall, a reminder of the days just after Saddam's fall in 2003, before American occupation, insurgents bombings, kidnappings and shootings dashed hopes.

Now that IS interesting!

Iran planning Sunni assassinations in Iraq - report
Iran Focus ^ | 2005 Oct 19

Posted on 10/21/2005 10:34:43 AM EDT by Wiz

London, Oct. 19 – An Iranian-backed militia group which has penetrated key positions in the Iraqi Interior Ministry has been ordered to assassinate Iraqi Sunni Muslim activists, Iraqi media reported.

Iran had prepared to launch a large intelligence operation aimed at eliminating secular and Sunni activists in Iraq, the al-Molf Net website wrote, adding that armed groups with ties to Tehran have been ordered to “assassinate the more influential and active Sunni Arab activists in Iraq”.

A "central body" responsible for the assassinations has been set up in the Iraqi Interior Ministry, the report said. The body is run by a committee of several pro-Iranian Badr Brigade commanders including Hadi Al-Ameri, Abu-Montazer Al-Husseini, Abu-Zolfaqar Hassan, Abu-Hosham Ahmadi, Haj Abu-Nour, and Ahmad Al-Jaberi, as well as a representative from the elite Qods Force, responsible for extra-territorial activities of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

(snip)

Look at this translation by Laura Mansfield also in conjunction with this thread and the post by Wiz.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1505789/posts?page=32#32

Iraq's Ba'th Party Issues Statement on Saddam's Trial Statement by the Ba''th Party:

"The Illigitimate Trial Will Open a Distictive Phase of Jihad in the Action of the Iraqi Armed Resistance"

Al-Quds al-Arabi
Wednesday, October 19, 2005

The Ba'th Party said the trial of the former Iraqi president Saddam Husayn will open a new phase in the armed resistance. In a statement, which was sent to Al-Quds al-Arabi yesterday, the party said:

The beloved comrade leader Saddam Husayn al-Majid will make a stand on 19 October in a position of righteousness, freedom and challenge as a leader of the struggle, a Jihad resistance fighter, a national Iraqi, a pan-Arab nationalist and a progressive humanitarian figure. He will be representing all the proud Iraqis and free Arabs and decent humanity in putting on trial, exposing and incriminating the American imperialism and its alliance with the Zionists, anti-Arabism and the languid official Arab circles in their evil conspiracy, treacherous collaboration, unjust occupation and spiteful destruction of Iraq, its state and its institutions. It is yet another day of bold and continuous Ba'thist confrontation which comrade Saddam Husayn has been leading.

The statement added the American occupation of the defiant Iraq is undergoing a state of every day collapse. This has forced the occupation dues on its floundering agenda to be mere desperate reactions and aborted attempts of the greatest power to deal with the Iraqi armed resistance haphazardly. The Iraqi armed resistance has foiled and continues to foil the implementation of the global plan of the American imperialism in its renewed doctrine.

As Al-Ba'th has anticipated beforehand, it has been proven that any military or security victory which the American occupation has achieved in Iraq is temporary and crumbling. These do not form any positively calculated and accumulative additions in the strategic context of the occupation. This is the result of the Iraqi armed resistance and its superior strategic perspective as it has been managed and launched by comrade leader Saddam Husayn al-Majid, who also secured its continuation and perseverance.

This latest occupation due which is scheduled for the nineteenth of October and involves holding the first session of the trial of the imprisoned leader, president of the Republic of Iraq and the commander in chief of the armed forces falls also within this stumbling occupational context. It is dictated and hastened by the continuous and escalating pressures the Bush administration and its terrified and exhausted stooge regime are facing in the occupied - resisting Iraq.

The convening of the illegitimate trial will open a distinct Jihad phase in the Iraqi armed resistance. It does not represent an isolated reaction in the context of the current and continuous fighting which is going on the Iraqi territory between Al-Ba'th and the resistance on the one hand and the occupation and its puppets on the other hand.

Comrade Saddam Husayn will turn the trial into a battle of the Iraqis, Arabs and humanity. It will inspire the heroes of resistance and sharpen the will of the valiant mujahidin. It will harden the position of the Ba'thist fighters and will strengthen the hope of liberation in the souls of the brave Iraqis. The trial will enroot the spirit of unity and resistance in the hearts of the Palestinians and the Arabs and will enrich the legacy of free and independent humanity.

From a legal point of view, this trial will be faulty, illegitimate, and it will be manipulated to find justifications for occupation, although all such justifications have fallen apart and are rejected. The trial will be implemented by the spiteful anti-Arabism, age-old agents, and the traitors who are supported by the puppet Arab regimes. The trial is designed and implemented on behalf of Zionism, anti-Arabism, sectarianism, secessionism, religious reactionary forces and the world free masonry. It is the trial of the history of Iraq, the Arab and humanity. It is a trial of national unity and sovereignty. It is a trial of Iraq's nationalization of its oil wealth. It is a trial of the country's scientific infrastructure and national industry. It is a trial of the Iraqi armed forces and their renowned national and pan-Arab positions. It is a trial of victories, achievements and military history of the Iraqi armed forces. It is a trial of the non-aligned movement and political independence. The occupation forces and their agents want it to be a trial of the Iraqi armed resistance and its legitimate Jihad for liberation.

The statement said: Comrade Saddam Husayn, president of the republic and the commander in chief of the armed forces will fight this phase of the confrontation in the same manner as you have always known him. You heroes, will engage in the confrontation in your combat positions and among your active formations and under the leadership of forces and its various designations You will choose the option of armed resistance which knows no retreat until the full liberation of the whole of historic Iraq.

When the beloved leader appears in the trial, he will review you with his free conscience, his large heart, his sensitive feeling and his vigil awareness as he usually does. He will fight and struggle against occupation and the fallen traitors of Iraq resorting to his will and your will and determination. He will invoke his and your defiance, his and your resistance, and his and your Jihad. This is what frightens the occupation and makes it helpless. This is what destroys and exhausts the agent and treacherous authority in an accelerated manner.

Addressing the war (the party) supporters, the statement said: Salute the leader when he publicly appears in the trial by shots and projectiles of death that are aimed at their legitimate targets. Direct your fire at the soldiers, equipment, vehicles and bases of the occupying forces. Direct your fire at the herds of the agent authority's police and security, and its fallen and treacherous figures and symbols. Salute the leader by chanting for him, for Ba'th, for the army, for resistance, for Iraq, for Palestine and the Arab nation.

Remember the martyrs and glorify martyrdom. Remember and rest assured that millions of Arabs will salute with you and the same time the leader, and will chant for Iraq, for resistance, for Ba'th , Palestine and the Arab nation.

The statement concluded by addressing the Iraqis and the Arabs by saying:

The occupation and its puppet regime will not make any political or security gain from this trial. They will never achieve their aim through bartering the armed resistance, the struggle of Al-Ba'th and the holy war of the Iraqis with the freedom of the beloved leader Saddam Husayn.

Ever since he led the continuous, open and historical confrontation against them, Saddam Husayn has made them understand in various and successive stages, that there will be no compromise on principles, no appeasement with the occupation and aggression, and no surrender of the Arab nation's rights in Palestine. There will no acceptance of and dealing with the traitors and the fallen. There will be no sell off on the sovereignty, unity and the Arab nature of Iraq.

(Description of Source: London Al-Quds al-Arabi (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic -- London-based independent Arab nationalist daily with an anti-US and anti-Saudi editorial line; generally pro-Palestinian, tends to be sympathetic to Bin-Ladin)

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