by Mentalgongfu » Thu Jul 27, 2006 1:55 am
This Guardian version puts it in a different light. <br><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1831097,00.html">meanwhile in Iraq</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br>Saddam asks to be shot, not 'hanged like a criminal'<br><br>· Trial resumes after hunger strike over lawyers' deaths<br>· Ousted dictator calls on Iraqis to fight Americans<br><br>Julian Borger in Washington<br>Thursday July 27, 2006<br>The Guardian<br><br>Saddam Hussein asked yesterday to be executed by firing squad, not hanged "like a criminal", if he is sentenced to death by an Iraqi court hearing charges of mass murder against him.<br><br>Saddam made the plea at his first court appearance since ending an 18-day hunger strike. Clutching the Qu'ran, he seemed thinner as he appeared before chief judge Raouf Abdul Rahman. His voice was weaker but he was as combative as ever.<br><br>"I was brought against my will directly from the hospital," the 69-year-old said. "The Americans insisted that I come against my will. This is not fair."<br><br>Saddam and seven former officials from his regime have been on trial since last October for the torture and killing of 148 people, including women and children, in the Shia town of Dujail in 1982 in retaliation for an assassination attempt.<br><br>He was represented yesterday by a court-appointed lawyer, who refused to be filmed and spoke through a microphone that made his voice unrecognisable. Saddam condemned him as an "enemy of the people".<br><br>"Half my lawyers were killed," he told the judge. "Is it too much for you to protect them?"<br><br>Saddam's legal team is boycotting the trial until they are given better protection, after three defence lawyers were killed. The latest to be assassinated, Khamis al-Obeidi, was taken from his home in a Sunni neighbourhood by men in police uniforms last month and found shot dead near Baghdad's Shia district of Sadr City.<br><br>His colleagues blamed Shia death squads in the interior ministry for the killing. Baghdad is rapidly being engulfed by sectarian killings, prompting the announcement on Tuesday by George Bush and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, of the deployment of Iraqi and US reinforcements.<br><br>As Mr Maliki presented the plan to Congress yesterday, news came from Baghdad that 17 people, including two children, had been abducted by gunmen in police uniforms from a building in Baghdad.<br><br>With the trial nearing its end, he declared: "Remember that Saddam Hussein is a military man. If sentenced, it should be with a firing squad, not hanging like a criminal."<br><br>After taking power, Saddam put himself at the head of the army, but he never served as a regular soldier. He used yesterday's court appearance to urge Iraqi insurgents to drive US-led occupying forces out of the country. In a bitter exchange, the judge countered that the guerrillas were mostly killing Iraqis.<br><br>"If it is true you have fighters, make them attack the American camps not public places, markets and cafes.<br><br>"Tell them not to blow themselves up, to blow up the Americans," Judge Rahman said.<br><br>Saddam replied: "I call for Iraqis to stand together and to forgive each other, but against the enemy, I call on them to fight, to kill Americans."<br><br>He began a hunger strike earlier this month as a protest against what he insists is an illegitimate tribunal, and claimed yesterday to have been force fed "through my nose to my stomach".<br><br>He is due to face a second trial next month on charges of genocide against Iraqi Kurds. <p></p><i></i>