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Saddam's judge defends executions
 The former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court has said he issued death warrants for Shia men accused of plotting to assassinate Saddam Hussein. Awad Hamad al-Bandar, who oversaw the trial of 148 Shia men accused of the assassination plot in 1982, said in court on Monday that he personally issued a death warrant for them and insisted that it was legal. "They attacked the president of the republic and they confessed," al-Bandar said in testimony before the judges trying him, Saddam, and six others for crimes against humanity.
Al-Bandar, the first of the four senior defendants to give testimony in his own defence, accused the dead men of being part of a plot by the Iranian-backed Dawa party to kill Saddam during Iraq's war with Iran.
Posted by: Fred 2006-03-14 |
