Saddam on hunger strike
2004-12-12 17:14
Baghdad - Ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and 11 top leaders of his regime awaiting trial for crimes against humanity have gone on hunger strike in their US detention centre, one of their lawyers said on Sunday.
"We have reliable information that Saddam Hussein and 11 other prisoners began a hunger strike on Friday to protest ill-treatment," Badiaa Aref Ezzat, the Iraqi lawyer of former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz, told AFP.
"I call on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to intervene immediately to check on the prisoners' condition," he added.
Saddam was captured by US forces last December and faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He is being held in US custody in a secret location in Iraq and has reportedly received treatment for an enlarged prostate gland, hernia problems and eye trouble.
He was recently visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross who reported he is in good health but refused to give more details.
A year after his capture on December 13 last year, Saddam - once the most visible symbol of the country he ruled for three decades - has faded into obscurity amid the daily insurgency that has engulfed Iraq.
Rather than a defiant strongman, television audiences around the world saw a haggard and submissive Saddam shortly after his capture, his face covered by an unkept, graying beard, as he was examined by a US military doctor.
Saddam briefly regained the world's attention in July when he first appeared before an Iraqi judge to hear the preliminary charges leveled against him, including the killings of political opponents and the gassing of Kurds in the late 1980s.
He regained some of his old swagger, confidently wresting control of the proceedings away from the young judge, who was put on the defensive when Saddam challenged the legitimacy of the court, which he described as a "theatre".