BAGHDAD, 28 June 2004 — A handcuffed and chained Saddam Hussein will be hauled in front of an Iraqi judge within days to hear his arrest warrant, Iraq’s national security adviser Muwaffaq Al-Rubaie told CBS television yesterday.
“We’re going to have control of Saddam Hussein. We’re going to have two American military MPs to hand him over to four Iraqi policemen. They will put a chain (on him) and take him to the waiting room,” Rubaie told CBS anchorman Dan Rather.
“The judge will call his name, Saddam Hussein Majid. And they will bring him in ... open his chain, handcuff and take him to the judge and the judge is going to give him his rights and his defense and he’s going to issue an arrest warrant against Saddam Hussein.
“They’re going to put the handcuffs on him. Take him ... controlled by Iraqi policemen.”
Meanwhile, Turkey rejected the demands of militants threatening to behead three Turkish hostages in Iraq during US President George W. Bush’s visit to Istanbul for a NATO summit.
Militants loyal to suspected Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi said in a statement aired on Al-Jazeera television on Saturday that the three hostages would be beheaded within 72 hours unless Turks stopped working with US-led forces in Iraq.
In a separate video tape aired on Al-Arabiya television yesterday, unidentified gunmen said they had seized a Pakistani hostage near Balad, north of Baghdad, and would kill him within three days unless Iraqi prisoners were released from jails.
The footage showed the Pakistani man, who had an identity card given to contractors working for the US military, urging Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to shut down his country’s embassy in Iraq.
Turkey and Pakistan are not part of the US-led occupation force in Iraq but many nationals work as drivers, cooks, cleaners and support staff for US troops.
Yesterday a US C-130 aircraft was hit by small arms fire after takeoff from Baghdad airport. One person was wounded and later died, the US military said.
Several explosions also rang out in central Baghdad as guerrillas aimed mortars at the “Green Zone” compound housing the US-led administration’s headquarters. One mortar killed two boys playing near the Tigris River, doctors said. The river bank was stained with a pool of blood and chunks of flesh.
A separate rocket attack on a US base in Baghdad killed an American soldier.
On Saturday evening two car bombs were detonated in a busy street in Hilla, a town 100 km south of Baghdad. The US military said the latest casualty reports showed 23 Iraqis were killed and 58 wounded. The attack came a day before Iraq’s US governor, Paul Bremer, visited the town.
“Anti-democratic forces struck again not far from this building just last night,” Bremer said during his visit. “They wounded and killed dozens of Iraqis, innocent Iraqi civilians.”
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told CBS News that violence could force a delay in national elections due to be held by the end of January. But White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Washington wanted the polls to happen on time.
Allawi has also said emergency laws will be imposed after his government formally assumes sovereignty on June 30, with a curfew likely to be declared in some areas of the country.
UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who helped form the interim Iraqi government, said many Iraqis want the elections to be held on time. Speaking on the BBC, Brahimi said the poll may be postponed only if there was a consensus among Iraqis that it was impossible to hold them in January.
— Additional input from agencies
