Daily Independent Online.
*
Friday, July 02, 2004.
Saddam, defiant, arraigned
Iraq's ex-leader
Saddam Hussein has made a defiant first appearance before an Iraqi judge,
branding President George W. Bush as the "real criminal".
He defended Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait in 1990, said he was still president and rejected the
court's jurisdiction.
He arrived in
handcuffs and chains at the court near Baghdad airport to hear charges of war
crimes and genocide.
TV pictures of the
hearing were released to international broadcasters shortly after the hearing
finished.
The images - cleared
for broadcast by the US military - were the first of Saddam Hussein since his
capture in December. They showed Iraq's former president looking thin, haggard
and with a trimmed, grey beard.
Saddam, described by
reporters at the hearing as both defiant and downcast, denounced the
proceedings as "theatre" and questioned the validity of the law he
was to be tried under.
"I am Saddam
Hussein, President of Iraq," he replied when asked to confirm his identity
at the hearing, which took place inside one of his former palaces, now a
sprawling US base.
Seven preliminary
charges were read out to him, including accusations over the campaign against
the Kurds in the 1980s, which included the use of chemical weapons in Halabja,
and the suppression of Kurdish and Shia uprisings after the 1991 Gulf War.
Saddam refused to
concede that he had invaded Kuwait in 1990.
"How can you, as
an Iraqi, say the 'invasion of Kuwait' when Kuwait is part of Iraq?" he
asked the judge, whose face was not shown on the film and whose identity is
being kept secret for security reasons.
He refused at the end
to sign legal papers confirming that he had been read his rights and understood
the case against him, saying he wanted his lawyer in court.
He was then taken back
to jail, while the charges were read out one-by-one against the 11 other
accused.
These include former
Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and Ali Hasan al-Majid, known as "Chemical
Ali" for his alleged role in poison gas attacks, who were formally
transferred from US to Iraqi custody on Wednesday.
