AMMAN, 11 June 2005 — The chief lawyer of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein yesterday issued an impassionate appeal to the world’s law bodies for help to pressure the Iraqi tribunal to supply the Amman-based legal panel with any documents needed to defend the former Iraqi leader. Ziyad Khasawneh also warned that if the Iraqi tribunal continued to keep his team in blackout, the panel could be obliged to “quit” the assignment.
“So far the special Iraqi court insisted on keeping us in complete blackout by failing to provide us with any document regarding the charges leveled against the president or the outcome of investigations conducted with him,” Khasawneh told Arab News.
“The Iraqi lawyer who represents the president’s defense panel in Iraq, Kahlil Duleimi, also failed to get any papers from the tribunal. This runs counter to the preliminary rules of litigation. It is not a trial. It is a farce,” he said. Khasawneh appealed to the world’s law bodies as well as to the international public opinion “to say their word on what is taking place”.
“They should come to our help, otherwise we could be forced to quit the job if we don’t have any other choice,” he said. Khasawneh leads some 30 Arab and non-Arab prominent specialists in the legal profession, who volunteered to defend the former Iraqi president.
The panel includes renowned lawyers such as former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Aisheh, daughter of the Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.
In compliance with the Iraqi Bar Association rules, Saddam’s defense team appointed Duleimi to represent it in Iraq. The Iraqi lawyer succeeded to meet Saddam at least twice over the past few months, the last of which was on April 27.
“President Saddam told Duleimi that he had complete confidence in the Amman-based in defense panel, but the problem is that the so-called special Iraqi tribunal refuses to provide us with any document. How then can we proceed with our job,” Khasawneh said. Saddam, whose regime was knocked out by a US-led multinational force in April 2003, was captured by an American force in December the same year at a hide-out near his hometown, Tikrit.
The Amman-based office of the International Committee of the Red Cross said that they managed to visit the former Iraqi leader several times at his US custody inside Iraq.
Saddam appeared in public for the first time before the Iraqi tribunal on July 1, 2004, but refused to respond to the charges list, saying he would not speak “without the presence of my lawyers”. A series of declarations were made in Iraq over the past few weeks about an imminent resumption of Saddam’s trial.
