Plot to kill Saddam judge
2005-11-26 21:49
Kirkuk - Iraqi police said on Saturday they have smashed an al-Qaeda-linked cell plotting an imminent assassination attempt against the chief judge trying deposed leader Saddam Hussein.
"We arrested 12 members of a cell linked to the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda during a dawn raid on a house in eastern Kirkuk," said Colonel Anwar Kader, police chief in the ethnically tense northern Iraqi city.
"They confessed during questioning to planning to kill (chief judge) Raed al-Juhi this week," he added.
Juhi heads the Iraqi High Tribunal which is due on Monday to resume the trial of Saddam and seven of his former cohorts on charges of crimes against humanity.
Kader said that all the suspects were Iraqi Sunni Arabs either from Kirkuk, Saddam's former hometown of Tirkrit or the restive western province of Al-Anbar.
The twelve also confessed to having helped carry out suicide attacks in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Suleimaniyah in October in which 10 people died, he said.
Explosives and al-Qaeda propaganda were also found in the house, said Kader.
- AFP