Jailed Saddam Hussein meets lawyer for first time

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein saw a lawyer on Thursday for the first time since his arrest a year ago, days after his attorneys protested at a lack of access to him or other detained former Iraqi officials, the defence team said.

"The interview lasted for more than four hours. The president seems in good health, much better compared to his first appearance before the court," the Jordan-based legal team hired by Saddam's exiled family said in a statement.

"The president appreciated his defence committee efforts."

An Iraqi lawyer on the team said one of its 20 members had visited Saddam and his jailed secretary Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, but declined to identify the attorney by name.

Another lawyer visited General Sultan Hashim Ahmed, defence minister under Saddam, while former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz was due to meet his defence counsel in the coming days.

Saddam, 67, has been behind bars since US forces caught him hiding in a hole in the ground near his home town of Tikrit on Dec. 13 last year. He is due to be tried for war crimes, as are 11 top aides, although no date has been set for any trial.

Saddam's lawyers said this week they did not recognise the interim government's efforts to try him or his deputies because they had been denied access to counsel. Lawyers had also not been able to see documents on which to prepare their defences.

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on Tuesday that war crimes trials of some of Saddam's lieutenants would begin next week.

The Iraqi Special Tribunal said that its "investigative hearings" would start soon. An official at the British embassy, which works closely with the Iraqi government, said on Thursday two or three hearings should be held next week.

Iraq's defence minister said Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al- Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his alleged use of poison gas, would be the first to appear before a judge.

Western diplomats stress the hearings are preliminary and not a full-scale commencement of war crimes trials. Some Iraqi officials see the timing as part of efforts by Allawi to raise his US-backed government's profile for an election on January 30.

Saddam himself is expected to be among the last to be tried.

The lawyer who speaks for the defence team in the Jordanian capital Amman, Ziyad Khasawneh, said he did not know when its most high-profile client would next appear in court.

Twelve leaders of the toppled Baathist government, including Saddam, are being guarded by US troops at the military base of Camp Cropper near Baghdad, awaiting trial by Iraqi judges.

They appeared briefly in court in July to be told of the charges against them, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some briefly shunned food this week as part of a short-lived protest against their detentions.

Khasawneh, appointed by Saddam's wife Sajida Khairallah, had threatened legal action against the US administration unless members of the team were allowed to see their client.

But proceedings appeared to be moving forward this week, with an Iraq-based member of the legal team saying some of the defence lawyers expected to meet Justice Ministry officials as early as Saturday. The Justice Ministry declined to comment.

Much of the evidence against those facing trial is expected to come from 283 mass graves discovered around Iraq in the 21 months since US-led forces overthrew the former government.

The latest, containing possibly 500 bodies, was uncovered near the city of Sulaimaniya, in the autonomous Kurdish region of northeastern Iraq where other graves have also been found.

Saddam launched military offensives against the Kurds in the late 1980s and forces under "Chemical Ali" used poison gas against the village of Halabja in 1988, killing some 5,000.

One of the reasons given by US and Iraqi authorities for the delay in bringing Saddam and his lieutenants to trial has been the difficulty of gathering evidence from graves and sifting through the tonnes of documents left by the Baathists.

Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin said on Wednesday it would take over 25 years to uncover the fate of what he said were hundreds of thousands who disappeared under Saddam.

- REUTERS