World waiting for Saddam

2004-07-01 11:14

Baghdad - The world is waiting for its first glimpse of Saddam Hussein since he was captured, when he appears before an Iraqi judge on Thursday, while US-led forces kill at least seven people in their first major military offensive since Iraq regained sovereignty.

The apparently slimmer former dictator will make his first appearance in a special court to hear charges expected to include crimes against humanity in the first step of a long legal process to bring him and 11 henchmen to justice.

The ex-president, said to have lost weight since his capture in December, will be brought handcuffed and chained before the Iraqi Special Tribunal where he will hear an extensive list of charges against him.

Eleven senior members of his regime, including former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz and presidential adviser Ali Hassan al-Majid, will also appear before the tribunal later on Thursday.

It will be the world's first glimpse of Saddam since footage was released of a bearded and dishevelled former strongman after his arrest by American troops.

The former tyrant, who is still being guarded by multinational forces despite being transferred to Iraqi legal custody on Wednesday, will be handed over to four Iraqi guards who will take him to the high-security courtroom in central Baghdad, an official said.

The spectacle is expected to be televised and the images beamed around the world, but officials warned that an actual indictment would not happen for several months.

Attention on Saddam

As attention focused on Saddam, the US-led military overnight on Wednesday killed as least seven people and wounded 17 in its first major strike in Iraq since the occupation ended on Monday, hospital sources said.

US-led military forces have carried out several air raids on suspected hideouts of Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi's network in Fallujah, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad.

In a further sign of the heavy military presence that will remain in Iraq despite the end of the US-led coalition, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez stepped down as the top US commander in Iraq on Thursday to be replaced by a four-star general as he returns to his old job as a US commander in Germany.

In a handover ceremony at Camp Victory, the main US base in Baghdad, Sanchez was replaced by General George Casey, vice chief of staff of the US army, as the commander of Multinational Force Iraq - the name given to a deployment of some 150 000 mainly US soldiers in the country.

A senior finance ministry official and two of his staff were killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad earlier in the morning and two others wounded, officials said.

- AFP