BAGHDAD, 18 April 2006 — The court trying Saddam Hussein met for an hour yesterday with the deposed Iraqi leader challenging the prosecution’s claim that he had signed documents authorizing the killing of 148 Shiite villagers.

In the latest hearing, chief prosecutor Jaafar Al-Mussawi presented a report by handwriting experts that he said proved the signatures on the documents were in fact Saddam’s and his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim Hassan Al-Tikriti’s.

The Iraqi High Tribunal is trying the former president and his seven co-defendants on charges of crimes against humanity for the murder of 148 Shiites from the village of Dujail where Saddam narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in 1982.

During yesterday’s brief session, Saddam’s lawyer contested the handwriting experts’ report, demanding that a neutral body make a judgment on the authenticity of the signatures. “We contest these reports completely and demand that a neutral body from outside Iraq be formed to verify these signatures,” said Saddam’s lawyer Khalil Al-Dulaimi.

“The body should comprise neutral people, but not have members from Iran which is hostile to Arabs,” the lawyer said.

Khamis Al-Obaidi, another defense lawyer, also demanded neutral experts, saying the three experts picked by the prosecutor “were members of the Interior Ministry and not neutral. They are against the former regime.”

When the prosecutor tried to prove Barzan’s signatures were original, the defendant snapped: “My signature is simple, anyone can forge it.” Barzan, Saddam’s former intelligence chief, even accused Mussawi of leaking the report to US-funded radio Sawa, which is broadcast across the Middle East.

In two earlier hearings, Saddam acknowledged that he had ordered the trial of Dujail villagers suspected of plotting to assassinate him, but stopped short of admitting he was responsible for their executions.

The prosecution has presented volumes of documents linking the former president and others to the Dujail killings, including signed letters ordering the villagers to be tried and jailed and later allegedly executed.

Following the dispute, chief Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman adjourned the hearings until Thursday to give the prosecutors more time to prove the authenticity of the signatures.

Yesterday’s session began with the presence of all eight defendants in court. Dulaimi demanded the resignation of the chief judge, arguing he was not neutral. Abdel Rahman swiftly rejected the request.

The trial began in October, with Saddam and his half-brother injecting pandemonium into the proceedings with their rants and jeers against the judge and prosecutor. The trial has also been marred by the murder of two defense lawyers and the January resignation of the case’s previous chief justice, who displeased the government by not reining in Saddam’s outbursts.

But since March, the case has moved into a quieter phase, avoiding the early pitfalls of walkouts and boycotts by defendants and their lawyers.

In the past few sessions, the prosecution has presented volumes of documents with signatures linking the former Iraqi strongman to the killings.

Fighting a possible death sentence, Saddam has insisted the state trials of Dujail villagers were carried out in accordance with the law. “This was my decision as the president. I had the right to question the judgment, but I was convinced of the evidence against them,” Saddam said in a previous session justifying the trial of Dujail villagers.

The deposed president has also charged that witnesses presented against him had been bribed and coerced by the prosecution.

International human rights experts claim that the trial has been conducted well below international legal standards. Nehal Buta of New York-based Human Rights Watch, who has been tracking the trial since October, said: “We still have not seen qualitative improvement in the conduct of the proceedings.”

Saddam and six others will also face charges of genocide over the 1988 Anfal campaign against Kurds that left as many as 100,000 people dead.