Saddam trial adjourned
2006-04-24 12:14
Baghdad - The trial of Saddam Hussein has been adjourned to May 15, after prosecutors on Monday played an audiotape said to be a phone call between the former Iraqi leader and one of his co-defendants discussing the destruction of farmlands during a crackdown against Shi'ites in the 1980s.
In the tape, a voice purported to be that of Taha Hussein Ramadan said the levelling of farms and palm groves in the town of Dujail, carried out as retaliation for an attack on Saddam there, had been nearly completed and that the owners would be given compensation.
He also talks of moving "suspect elements" out of Dujail and the nearby town of Balad and bringing in "replacements, meaning we will try to change the social reality" in the two towns.
A voice said to be Saddam's asked questions in the tape, but the voice
was not clear in the murky tape, which was a few minutes long. Prosecutors told the court that they had obtained the tape earlier but did not say from where.
Tape, signatures disputed
Co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim disputed the tape, as well as reports by handwriting experts presented in the past three sessions authenticated defendants' signatures on documents connected to the crackdown. Ibrahim and some other defendants have alleged the documents are forged.
"Where are you getting these documents? Whose hands are behind them?" Ibrahim said.
"Forging documents and imitating signatures is an age-old phenomenon," he said. "There have big strides in forging documents and CDs. ... I can bring anyone with any knowledge of a computer and do the same thing in front of you."
Adjournment
After a session of about 90 minutes, chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman adjourned the court to May 15.
The eight defendants are on trial for the deaths of 148 Shi'ites, the imprisonment of hundreds more and for torture and destruction of farmlands in a crackdown launched in the town of Dujail following a 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam.
A report by handwriting experts read in court on Monday raised questions over purported signatures by one of the defendants, Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid.
It said the handwriting on documents - said to be letters sent by Ruwayyid to the Interior Ministry in the days after the shooting attack on Saddam informing on Dujail families involved in opposition activitity - did not match samples given by Ruwayyid.
There was no immediate explanation for the failed match. In an earlier session, Ruwayyid insisted the document was a fake.
The five-member team of experts authenticated all the other 11 documents it had been asked to examine, including an order said to be signed by Saddam approving death sentences for the 148 Shi'ites.
- AP