Plot against Saddam Judge Alleged
Less than 24 hours before Saddam Hussein‘s scheduled return to court on charges of crimes against humanity, police in northern Iraq said Sunday that they had arrested eight Sunni Arab men carrying orders from a fugitive associate of the deposed leader ordering the assassination of the court’s best-known judge.
Prosecutors have said they plan to bring their first witnesses against Hussein and other defendants when the court resumes in Baghdad today after a nearly six-week recess. Defense lawyers say they will demand a new 45-day adjournment while the court considers motions to annul the proceedings on the ground that the American role in creating the court has voided its authority under Iraqi and international law.
The police commander in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, Gen. Sarhad Qader, said the eight men arrested there were being held in connection with a plot to kill Raid Juhi, chief investigative judge of the court that is trying Hussein, known as the Iraqi High Tribunal. Qader said the men were caught with a document containing orders to carry out the killing from Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Hussein’s former vice president and the last of his inner circle of associates to have evaded capture or death.
Source: SFGate.
There are currently no comments on this thread.