IRAQ: A defence lawyer for one of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants was shot dead after being abducted, police said yesterday.
Saadoun Janabi was kidnapped from his small Baghdad office late on Thursday, witnesses said. Police said yesterday his body was later found shot, execution-style, in the chest and head.
Iraq's government condemned the murder, which some human rights groups said could have a "chilling effect" on Saddam's defence team and dim hopes for a fair trial.
Janabi was attorney for Awad al-Bander, a former judge who had appeared with Saddam and six other co-accused in court in Baghdad on Wednesday at the start of their trial on charges stemming from the killings and executions of more than 140 men in the 1980s.
Bander is accused of overseeing the trials of dozens of men from the Shia town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, who were sentenced to death in the wake of a failed assassination attempt against Saddam in July 1982.
The Dujail case is the first against Saddam, who is also expected to face charges of war crimes and genocide.
The assassination of Janabi, who lawyers said had been an old friend of the former dictator, came as Saddam's formerly dominant Sunni Arab minority wages a bloody insurgency against the Shia- and Kurdish-led government and its US backers.
Both Baghdad and Washington hope the trial will prove a unifying force and draw a line under Saddam's dictatorship. But some human rights groups fear it may be simple "victor's justice" that could further exacerbate sectarian tensions.
Iraq's Electoral Commission said yesterday final results from the October 15th constitutional referendum would not be released for another day or two.
The constitution, which Washington hopes will stabilise Iraq as a democratic ally and allow it to begin withdrawing its 150,000 troops, is believed to have passed despite opposition from many Sunni Arabs, who say it seals their political eclipse.
The US military announced yesterday that three marines and a soldier had been killed, bringing the number of US servicemen and women who have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to at least 1,992.
Some moderate Sunni leaders told visiting Arab League chief Amr Moussa yesterday they would attend a reconciliation conference in Cairo on November 15th which is also expected to draw Arab foreign ministers worried over the regional implications of Iraq's unending violence.
But other groups set conditions for participation, including the withdrawal of US troops, and hardcore insurgents seemed unlikely to be drawn to the negotiating table.
US prosecutors have charged a Texas oil tycoon and two Swiss executives and their companies with paying secret kickbacks to Iraq in the UN oil-for-food programme.
Tycoon Oscar Wyatt, the former Coastal Corp. chairman, was arrested in Houston, Texas, on Friday, prosecutors said, becoming one of the highest-profile figures ensnared so far in the scandal.
The two Swiss nationals are being sought for extradition.
All three face up to 62 years in prison and heavy fines if convicted.