Saddam Lawyers Plan to Challenge Tribunal

[cal04]

Saddam Hussein's lawyers plan to challenge the legitimacy of the tribunal set to try him in Iraq and argue that he is immune from prosecution for alleged crimes he committed as president, one of his lawyers said. The tribunal "was drafted by an occupying power," Abdel-Haq Alani, an Iraqi-born lawyer involved in Saddam's defense, told the British Broadcasting Corp. in an interview aired Thursday night. "It has no right under international law to change the legal system of the occupied land."

He said Saddam was feeling "upbeat" and "very defiant" about the trial, scheduled to start Wednesday. The case centers on the role he and his co-defendants played in a 1982 massacre of 143 people in Dujail, a mainly Shiite Muslim town north of Baghdad, after a failed assassination attempt on Saddam.
Alani showed the BBC a list, signed by Saddam, of the 143 people killed, and said the leader had simply signed off on sentences handed down by the court system. "These people were tried and found guilty and sentenced to death according to the Iraqi criminal court, ... then the president signed the death sentence," he said.

The BBC said the legal team compared the signatures to President Bush's affirmations of criminals' death sentences when he was governor of Texas. Alani told the network that the defense team also planned to argue that Saddam should be immune from prosecution because his alleged crimes were committed while he was head of state. "He has full immunity under the prevailing Iraqi constitution," the lawyer said. "You can't have retroactive legislation that removes that immunity." The office of Anthony Scrivener, a leading British lawyer, said Friday he had been asked to help defend Saddam. Scrivener, who once helped free four men wrongfully imprisoned as Irish Republican Army bombers, had not yet decided whether to take the job, said Martin Hart, senior clerk in Scrivener's office. Scrivener, 70, was part of the legal team that freed the "Guildford Four," jailed for two 1975 pub bombings.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SADDAM_HUSSEIN?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=INTERNATIONAL&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[Amonester]

1. But... but... but... at least Iraqi women can be stoned now, hey?

:sarcasm: :sarcasm:

http://icasualties.org
http://costofwar.com

:cry: :grr: :banghead:

[LynnTheDem]

2. RAH RAH RAH!

America; making Iraq WORSE NOW than under Saddam Hussein!

RAH RAH RAH!

Stupid MFing rightwingnuts.

[Amonester]

3. Per chance (we hope), these idiots R not the real America.

Pinter: Torture and misery in name of freedom
By Harold Pinter who yesterday won the Nobel Prize for Literature
Published: 14 October 2005

~snip~

What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of Iraq? A bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of International Law. An arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public. An act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort (all other justifications having failed to justify themselves) - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

...

"We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it " bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East". But, as we all know, we have not been welcomed with the predicted flowers. What we have unleashed is a ferocious and unremitting resistance, mayhem and chaos.

...

What do Bush and Blair actually see when they look at themselves in the mirror?

I believe Wilfred Owen would share our contempt, our revulsion, our nausea and our shame at both the language and the actions of the American and British governments.

~more~

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article319540.ece

The real America has been put to sleep for almost 5 years now.



On Edit: The OP "speaks" for itself.

[LynnTheDem]

4. I bet the 30,000 citizens killed by the USA in Nicaragua would argue that.

I bet those killed by US nukes would, too. And Iraqis. And Afghanis. And Cubans. And Iranians. And and and and and...

The real America has been a nasty piece of work (foreign policy-wise) for a very long time.

[Amonester]

5. Yeah, but the real America I'm thinking about has Albert Gore for

President

http://www.algoresupportcenter.com

Trying to "wake-up" the real America. ;)

:smallcandles: