IRAQ: Iraqi prosecutors pressed ahead yesterday with efforts to prove that Saddam Hussein's signature was found on documents directly implicating him in the killings of 148 Shias in the 1980s.
The chief judge read out a report by prosecution experts authenticating the ousted president's signature on documents.
"The writing and signatures . . . related to Saddam Hussein match his handwriting and signatures," said chief judge Raouf Abdel Rahman after the trial of the ousted leader and seven co-accused resumed. He adjourned the trial until Monday.
Saddam and his co-defendants are charged with the killings of 148 Shia men and teenagers after an attempt on his life in Dujail in 1982, when he got out of his armoured car and personally interrogated people after he was shot at. Saddam has argued he had a right to refer them to court because they tried to assassinate a head of state. But he has refused to give a sample of his handwriting to the court.
His half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, questioned documents, saying members of the former leader's Baath party never signed their names. He repeated his argument that the 148 Shias deserved to be prosecuted because they tried to kill the president and were linked to a country in a state of war with Iraq, as neighbouring Shia Iran was at the time.
Saddam is expected to face another trial on charges of genocide against Iraq's ethnic Kurds in the late 1980s in the Anfal campaign, in which he was accused of killing over 100,000 people. Prosecutors chose the Dujail case first because they thought it was more clear-cut than charges such as genocide, and would deliver a quick verdict.