BAGHDAD, 22 June 2006 — One of Saddam Hussein’s main lawyers was shot dead yesterday after men in police uniforms took him from his home, police and relatives said, the third defense attorney to be killed since the trial opened in October.
Gunmen also abducted over 100 employees of the Ministry of Industry traveling in a fleet of buses just north of Baghdad, police and Interior Ministry sources said.
The killing of Khamis Al-Obaidi was a new setback for the US-backed court. It fueled complaints that sectarian violence, some by Shiite militias within the police, against Saddam’s once-dominant Sunni Arab minority, is crippling a fair trial.
The lead defense lawyer called for the case to be suspended and the defendants taken abroad after the death of his deputy.
Obaidi’s wife told another defense lawyer that men in police uniform took Obaidi from his Baghdad home around 7 a.m.
“They said ‘We’re from internal security and we need you for questioning’,” Qatari attorney Najeeb Al-Nuaimi told Al-Jazeera television. Two hours later, Obaidi’s body was dumped on a road beside a poster honoring a Shiite leader killed under Saddam.
The attack appeared very similar to the killing of another lawyer the day after the televised trial began in October.
Saddam and seven Baath party allies are being tried for crimes against humanity over the deaths of Shiite villagers.
A police officer who identified himself as Capt. Sabah said Obaidi had been shot eight times and there were signs of torture, both his arms were broken.
Chief prosecutor Jaafar Al-Mussawi said the killing would “not affect or delay the trial and we will defy terrorism.” It came two days after Mussawi demanded the death penalty for Saddam and three of his former senior aides.
Shopowners told Reuters three gunmen dumped the body of Obaidi at a roundabout under a poster of a senior Shiite leader killed by Saddam’s agents in 1999. He was the father of Moqtada Sadr, the leader of the Mehdi Army militia.
“They fired into the air and said ‘This is the fate of Baathists!’,” said a vegetable seller whose shop is 10 meters from where the body was dumped.
The area is not far from the Sadr City slum, a stronghold of Sadr’s militia. The body of Saadoun Janabi, the first lawyer to be killed, was also dumped nearby. Neighbors said then that he was seized by men saying they were from the Interior Ministry.
Unlike other defense lawyers, Obaidi still lived in Iraq.
Chief defense counsel Khalil Al-Dulaimi said the trial should be suspended and the defendants taken abroad for safety: “We hold the US and Iraqi governments, and particularly the militias, responsible for Obaidi’s killing,” he told Reuters.
A Western official close to the court said Obaidi was offered protection but had turned it down.
Nuaimi told Jazeera other defense lawyers had received written death threats from pro-government Shiite militias.
Obaidi told Reuters last year he preferred to stay in Iraq during court recesses: “Whatever will be will be,” he said.
Al-Qaeda’s allies said in a Web posting they would kill four Russian Embassy staffers kidnapped in Baghdad 18 days ago because Moscow failed to meet a deadline to pull troops out of Chechnya. Russia urged the group to heed Muslim calls to free the men.
Five busloads of employees from a factory in Taji north of Baghdad were commandeered by dozens of gunmen, officials said. One source put the number of those kidnapped at over 100.
