Three defendants take stand at Hussein trial

[David]

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Three of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants testified for the first time Sunday, denying any role in the deaths and arrests of Shiites in the 1980s as the trial of the former Iraqi leader entered a new phase.

Mizher Ruwaid, his father Abdullah Ruwaid and Ali Dayem Ali -- former officials in Saddam's ruling Baath Party -- stood one by one to be directly questioned by the chief judge and prosecutors about the crackdown launched against the Shiite town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam.

After hearing their testimony for about four hours, chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman adjourned the trial until Monday.

Saddam and seven former members of his regime are on trial for the deaths of 148 Shiites in the crackdown, as well as illegal imprisonment and torture of Dujail residents. They face possible execution by hanging if convicted.

The testimony represents a new phase in the trial. Since proceedings began October 19, the prosecution has been bringing forward witnesses and presenting documents they say prove the defendants' role in the crackdown.

The defendants have frequently spoken up during previous sessions, arguing their case. But Sunday's session represented the first time they have directly testified. It was not clear how many defendants would be heard Sunday and whether Saddam would be among them.

Sunday's session was the first since March 1, when Saddam boldly acknowledged to the court that he was responsible for sending to trial the 148 Shiites who were eventually sentenced to death by Saddam's Revolutionary Court. But he insisted his actions were not a crime, since the Shiites were suspected in the attempt on his life.

Abdel-Rahman asked Mizher Ruwaid to relate to the court what he was doing on the day of the assassination attempt against Saddam, whose motorcade was fired on as he visited Dujail on July 8, 1982. Ruwaid said he was working as a telephone operator and that he held only a low-level position in the Baath Party at the time.

"I have no relation with the July 8 incident, and I was not involved in any detentions that followed," he said.

Abdel-Rahman asked him about handwritten letters prosecutors presented last month, saying they were from Mizher Ruwaid informing to police on Dujail families allegedly linked to the Shiite opposition in the wake of the shooting. Many of the families listed were arrested and several were eventually killed.

Ruwaid denied the letters were his. "The state and the security services did not need the help of a small employee like me," he insisted.

Prosecutors then questioned Ruwaid. After more than hour of testimony, Abdel-Rahman asked Ruwaid to sit, and the next defendant, Ali, was called in. He too denied helping the crackdown, saying he was in Baghdad on the day of the shooting, though he returned to Dujail later in the day.

"My foot did not step into any house in Dujail. We did not harm the people of Dujail and we did not write reports about them," Ali said.

The court was silent as the defendants spoke. The defense team -- including former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clarke -- was present.

The session came a day after former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic -- on trial for the past four years on charges of crimes against humanity before an international court in The Hague -- died in prison in the Netherlands. Milosevic, who suffered from chronic heart ailments, apparently died of natural causes, the U.N. tribunal said.

It was not immediately known if Saddam and his co-defendants knew about Milosevic's death. Their main source of news is their defense lawyers.

The trials of Saddam and Milosevic are significantly different. The Yugoslav leader's case was heard by a U.N. court, while Saddam's is before an Iraqi tribunal, a point insisted on by Iraq's new leaders, who rejected an international trial.

The Iraqi court has also sought to carry out a swift trial to avoid the years-long process that Milosevic's death has abruptly ended, before a verdict could be reached. Iraq's new Shiite-dominated leadership has repeatedly said its constituents are eager to see a verdict.

So Saddam and the other seven were put on trial specifically for the Dujail incident, because prosecutors believed it presented the strongest case with the most documentation. Much larger, more famous cases -- a 1988 poison gas attack on the village of Halabja that killed some 5,000 Kurds, or the 1991 crackdown on Shiites and Kurds that followed the first Gulf War -- will be held off for later trials.

Last month, prosecutors began presenting documents they say directly pin Saddam to the Dujail crackdown -- including a memo approving death sentences against the 148 Shiites signed by Saddam.

But to convict the former Iraqi leader, they will likely have to convince the five-judge panel that Saddam was aware that the crackdown went well beyond the actual authors of the assassination attempt and aimed to punish a large civilian population.

Families -- including women and young children -- were swept up in the arrests and spent years in prison, and large swaths of farmland owned by Dujail families were razed. A string of Dujail residents have testified they were tortured in prison.