Judge in Saddam trial to set verdict date

BAGHDAD - A judge trying Saddam Hussein for the killing of 148 Shi'ite villagers in the 1980s will set a date tomorrow for a verdict in a case that carries the maximum penalty of death by hanging, court officials said.

A year after the case opened in a US-backed courtroom in Baghdad, chief judge Raouf Abdel Rahman will hold a closed session to review witness testimonies and evidence and announce a final date for a verdict for former Iraqi president Saddam and seven of his top lieutenants for crimes against humanity.

"The judge needs to review procedural and administrative issues and set a final date to announce the verdict," chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi told Reuters today.

"The verdict is not tomorrow. There will be no defendants, no lawyers. I think the verdict will be 20 days from tomorrow."

Prosecutors have asked for the death penalty to be imposed if Saddam is found guilty in the killing of 148 Shi'ites after an attempt on his life in the village of Dujail in 1982.

Saddam is also on trial separately on charges of genocide for a military operation against the country's ethnic Kurds in the late 1980s that killed tens of thousands.

Saddam, 69, has acknowledged in court that he ordered trials that led to execution of dozens of Shi'ites after the assassination attempt but said he acted within the law.

Iraqi law states an execution must be by hanging. Saddam has said he deserves to meet this fate by firing squad rather than the gallows.

But any execution could be delayed by lengthy appeals and by the up to a dozen other cases the toppled leader could face.

Saddam struck a typically defiant tone in an open letter dictated to his chief lawyer Khalil Dulaimi during a four-hour meeting yesterday in his prison.

Saddam said Iraqis should put aside differences and set only one goal -- to drive US troops out of Iraq.

"Victory is at hand but don't forget that your near-term goal is confined to liberating your country from the forces of occupation," Saddam said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters on Sunday.

Saddam has dismissed the Iraqi High Tribunal, set up by a US occupying administration after the 2003 invasion to oust him, as a sham.

He has said a guilty verdict has already been concocted by his political enemies now in power.

Prosecutors in the Dujail trial have also asked for the death penalty for three other co-accused, including Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's former intelligence chief and half-brother.

The trial, which US and Iraqi officials had hoped would project a new image of democracy in Iraq, has been marred by the killing of three defence lawyers, a number of hunger strikes by Saddam and the resignation of a previous judge, who accused the Shi'ite-led government of political pressure.

Some international legal groups have said raging violence between Saddam's fellow minority Sunnis and majority Shi'ites, and an unrelenting Sunni insurgency, makes a fair trial almost impossible.

They have called for a trial to be held in a third country.

- REUTERS