600 Saddam lawyers sign up

2003-12-28 11:33

Amman - Hussein Mjalli, the head of Jordan's Bar Association, says more than 600 lawyers have signed up to defend captive Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Mjalli said the volunteers had signed up at the association's offices in Amman and 600 lawyers indicated their readiness to be part of a defence team for the former president of Iraq.

"The intention is to form a higher committee for the defence of Saddam, one which will include legal experts from all over the world," Mjalli said.

The general secretariat of the Arab Lawyers' Union was meanwhile due to meet in Cairo to discuss plans for setting up the defence team, he added.

The Jordanian association earlier this month sent letters to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Arab League chief Amr Mussa urging them to ensure that Saddam would be handed to a neutral country or the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The barristers have argued that Saddam should not be put on trial because "a head of state is immune from prosecution" and that in any case he should be protected from retribution by the United States.

US troops captured Saddam in northern Iraq on December 13.

Since then both the Jordanian association and the Cairo-based Arab Bar Association have insisted that Saddam receive a fair trial before an Iraqi court supervised by Arab and international human rights organisations.

Members of Iraq's US-appointed interim Governing Council say Saddam must be judged by an Iraqi tribunal inside Iraq, a view shared by Paul Bremer, the US civil administrator in Iraq.

- SAPA