AMMAN, 31 July 2005 — An unidentified man attacked ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein during a court hearing in Baghdad on Thursday and the pair exchanged blows, his defense team said yesterday. “As the president was leaving the courtroom, a person... attacked the president and there was a fist-fight between them,” the Jordan-based team said in a statement. “The head of the court did not intervene to stop the assault,” it said.
It was not clear if Saddam, who is in US custody awaiting trial on charges of crimes against humanity during his iron-fisted rule, was hurt during the assault or if he received any medical treatment, his lawyers said.
Thursday’s hearing of the Iraqi Special Tribunal related to possible charges against Saddam over the brutal suppression of a Shiite uprising in 1991 following the Gulf War that ended Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait.
The lawyers said the attacker was among a group of people in court unknown to Saddam’s Iraqi lawyer Khalil Dulaimi who was at the hearing.
Earlier this month, the tribunal filed the first charges against Saddam over the 1982 killing of 143 residents of the village of Dujail, northeast of Baghdad, where he had been the target of a failed assassination bid.
Abdel Haq Alani, a British lawyer and consultant for the defense team, said he has advised Saddam’s lawyers to boycott any further proceedings and branded Thursday’s incident a “mockery of justice”.
“I cannot imagine how a court that has any respect for the proceedings, would allow anybody from outside to sit in court and take action. This is not a trial and there should be no spectators,” Alani said.
“A judge who has any self respect should have restrained the attacker and held him in contempt of court and put him in jail but it seems to me from Khalil’s statements that the judge took no action.” Alani said he advised the team “to boycott the whole proceedings completely until the president receives the proper legal advice he is entitled to.”
A spokeswoman for Detainee Operations in Iraq, the US military unit charged with overseeing the custody of prisoners, said no such incident took place. “Nothing like that happened with Saddam,” Lt. Kristy Miller said.
