Saddam lawyers told to pick up his effects

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's lawyers have been asked to pick up his personal effects but Iraq's Justice Ministry denied it had taken custody of the former president and dismissed a U.S. suggestion he would hang as early as Saturday.

One defense lawyer, who declined to be identified, said Saddam had been handed over by U.S. forces to Iraqi government custody. U.S. military spokesmen said they had nothing to add to a statement late on Thursday that he was still in their control.

Asked about comments from the defense lawyer that Saddam had been handed over, Deputy Justice Minister Bosho Ibrahim told Reuters: "This is not true. He is still with the Americans."

He also dismissed a remark by a senior U.S. official who said there were plans to send Saddam to the gallows as early as Saturday. The ministry, which is in charge of implementing court rulings, would not execute Saddam before January 26, he said.

Khalil al-Dulaimi, who led Saddam's defense team until he was sentenced on November 5, told Reuters: "The Americans called me and asked me to pick up the personal effects."

On Thursday, Saddam was allowed to see two of his half-brothers, who are also in detention at a U.S. base near Baghdad. A lawyer said the former president was in high spirits.

U.S. military and embassy spokesmen dealing with the issue said they had nothing to add to a statement late on Thursday which said Saddam was still in U.S. custody and stressed the need for secrecy over arrangements for security reasons.

Although legally in Iraqi custody, U.S. troops physically keep guard over Saddam. And although Iraqis will carry out the execution, U.S. and Iraqi officials say, it seems likely U.S. forces will stay on hand throughout for fear that opponents of the former leader could turn it into a public spectacle.

Iraqi officials backed away on Thursday from suggestions they would definitely hang him within a month, in line with a 30-deadline set out in the statues of the tribunal. A cabinet minister told Reuters a week-long religious holiday ending only on January 7 would stall any execution.

Saddam's lawyer said he bade farewell to two of his half brothers on Thursday in a rare prison meeting.

"He was in very high spirits and clearly readying himself," Badie Aref, a defense lawyer, told Reuters after the 69-year-old former leader met half-brothers Watban and Sabawi, who are also both held at the U.S. army's Camp Cropper near Baghdad airport.

"He told them he was happy he would meet his death at the hands of his enemies and be a martyr, not just languish in jail.

The novelty of the U.S.-sponsored process by which Saddam and his third half-brother Barzan, along with another senior member of the Baath party, were condemned on November 5 has left considerable room for wrangling over the timing of any execution among rival factions and between Washington and Baghdad.

"It's none of the Americans' business to decide when," one justice ministry official said on Friday.

Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had previously said he wanted Saddam hanged this year for the killings, torture and other crimes against fellow Shi'ites in the town of Dujail.

But some of Saddam's fellow Sunnis have warned this could reinforce their community's alienation and many ethnic Kurds want Saddam first convicted of genocide against them in a second trial that is still underway.

Iraq's Saddam-era penal code bars executions on religious holidays. Eid al-Adha holiday, which follows the annual haj pilgrimage to Mecca, runs until January 7 in Iraq.

Nonetheless, the U.S. official in the United States said Saddam could be hanged within days: "I've heard that it's going to be a couple more days, probably."

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Dubai, Ibon Villelabeitia in Baghdad)

An Iraqi policeman talks on a walki-talkie in an empty street in central Baghdad. Iraq is nervously awaiting the execution of Saddam Hussein, amid rumours that the hanging is imminent and fears it could trigger yet more violence in the bloodsoaked country.(AFP/Ali Al-Saadi)

Iraq on alert as Saddam hanging nears

by Sabah Jerges

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq is nervously awaiting the execution of Saddam Hussein, amid rumours that the hanging is imminent and fears it could trigger yet more violence in the bloodsoaked country.

Saddam's defence counsel fed speculation about the ousted dictator's trip to the gallows by announcing that he had been asked to send someone to collect Saddam's belongings from the US base where he is being held.

"The Americans called me and asked me to pick up the personal effects of the president and Barzan al-Tikriti," lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi told AFP in Amman, referring to Saddam's half brother who has also been sentenced to death.

US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Chris Garver said Friday Saddam was under Iraqi legal authority, but "for security reasons" would not confirm whether or not he had been physically moved from a US military detention centre.

"Legally he was turned over to the Iraqis more than a year ago," he explained. "At the request of the Iraqi government we have maintained him at a US facility for security reasons."

The head of Iraq's interior ministry command centre, Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf, said the beleaguered security forces were on high alert ahead of a hanging expected to exacerbate sky-high sectarian tensions.

"Certainly, this is a big event, putting into effect the execution of this serial killer," he said. "We will take measures proportionate to this event. We will put all our forces on the streets so that no lives are jeopardised."

On November 5, when Saddam was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death, protests erupted in some parts of Iraq and authorities declared a three day curfew to prevent attacks by Sunni insurgents.

Khalaf said that such a measure could only be decreed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, but that his forces stood ready to act once informed of the date of the execution, which has yet to be confirmed.

On December 26, a panel of appeals court judges confirmed Saddam's sentence and ordered that he and two former aides be hanged within 30 days.

Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie refused Friday to put a date on the execution, but told AFP that the hanging would be announced in advance and not carried out in secret as some have speculated.

Maliki's main backer, US President George W. Bush's White House, thinks the ousted dictator could go to the gallows as early as Saturday, the first day of the four day Eid al-Adha holiday, the Muslim "Feast of Sacrifice".

"It's the government of Iraq's decision," a senior US official said at the Bush ranch in Texas. "It's not going to be tonight our time, or tomorrow their time, it's going to be maybe another day."

Asked whether the execution could spark violence by Saddam loyalists, the official said: "They start violence for any reason they can come up with."

In the almost four years since a US-led invasion drove Saddam from office, the oil-rich Middle Eastern nation has been engulfed in a rising tide of violence between warring political and sectarian factions.

Iraq's Shiite Arab majority and breakaway Kurds welcomed Saddam's fall, but many members of the Sunni Arab minority flocked to the banner of Islamist or pro-Saddam insurgent groups fighting his US-backed successors.

The execution, when it comes, can be expected to further deepen the sectarian divide. Shiite hardliners hope that it will knock the heart out of the insurgency, but other observers fear violent reprisals.

Meanwhile, Iraq's deadly daily diet of bloodshed continued.

On Friday, gunmen opened fire on a cafe in the town of Hindiya south of the capital and killed an off-duty policeman and a bystander, Captain Muthanna Hassan of the Babil province police told AFP.

In a separate attack by unidentified gunmen in nearby Mussayib another policeman was killed and five wounded, he added.

Once the formality of hanging Saddam and his cohorts, who were convicted of killing 148 Shiite villagers, is out of the way, Bush and Maliki will still face a major battle to restore peace to a shattered nation.

Maliki has promised to put more Iraqi army troops onto the streets of the capital as part of a new Baghdad security plan, but Bush has yet to unveil a promised "new way forward" for the 129,000-strong US force.

On Thursday, Bush met his top security officials at his ranch.

"I've got more consultation to do until I talk to the country about the plan," Bush told reporters afterwards. "I'm making good progress toward coming up with a plan that we think will help us achieve our objective."

Washington is expected to unveil its new plan early in the New Year.

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