Saddam 'prefers firing squad over hangman'

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein, weak from a hunger strike, said on Wednesday that he has been forced to attend his trial for crimes against humanity and that he would prefer to be shot than hung if found guilty.

The entire defence team boycotted the latest session in the controversial trial which is approaching its conclusion.

"I wrote you a petition clarifying that I don't want to come to court, but they brought me against my will ... I have been on a hunger strike since July 8," Saddam, wearing a dark suit and holding a Koran, told chief judge Raouf Abdel Rahman.

Saddam, 69, had been fed through a tube in a hunger strike to protest against what he says is an unfair trial.

The man who ruled Iraq with an iron fist said he would rather face a firing squad than death by hanging if convicted.

"I advise you as an Iraqi if you were in a circumstance in which you have to issue a death penalty you have to remember that Saddam is a military man and in this case the verdict should be death by shooting not by hanging," he told the judge.

Saddam appointed himself to head the army and he was never actually trained or served as a soldier before taking power.

The hunger strike did not take the edge off Saddam's trademark defiance exhibited throughout the trial in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, home to some of his former palaces.

Although his once imposing voice was weak and despite losing some weight, the former Iraqi leader behaved angrily at times.

"Even if I don't eat for 10 months, I will have my full power and health," he said. "Did you think Saddam Hussein would not be able to speak after 20 days?"

Saddam and seven co-defendants are charged with the killing of 148 Shi'ites after an attempt on his life in Dujail in 1982.

Saddam faces a second trial on charges of genocide against Iraq's ethnic Kurds in August.

SADDAM REJECTS COURT

The trial has already been tarnished by the killing of three defence lawyers and the resignation of the first chief judge to protest what he said was government interference.

"Half my lawyers were killed. Is it too much for you to protect them?," Saddam asked Abdel Rahman.

When the ousted president's court-appointed lawyer was about to read his closing argument, Saddam interrupted him: "The argument was written by a Canadian American agent."

Saddam's lawyers have accused the US military of force feeding him to end the strike.

"In hospital they were feeding me through my nose to my stomach," said Saddam.

Three other defendants are also staging hunger strikes to protest against what they consider to be an unfair trial.

They are thought to be his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, chief of the Revolutionary Court under Saddam.

When the court appointed lawyer spoke about teenagers who allegedly died under interrogation in a crackdown after the Dujail incident, the ex-president interrupted. "Is he a lawyer for Saddam Hussein or the prosecution?," he asked.

That lawyer refused to be filmed and spoke through a voice scrambler, fearful for his life in a country that has been ravaged by sectarian violence and a Sunni Arab insurgency led by Saddam loyalists since the ex-president was toppled in 2003.

When the former Iraqi leader told the court he would inspire insurgents to drive out occupiers, Abdel Rahman said resistance fighters should not kill innocent Iraqis.

"If it is true you have fighters, make them attack the American camps not public places, markets and cafes. Tell them not to blow themselves up, to blow up the Americans."

Saddam hit back. "A thousand like you would not even terrify my finger."

- REUTERS