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Brit Lawyer duped into Saddamâs defence team quits protesting âbad imageâ
The West Country solicitor defending Saddam Hussein announced yesterday that he was stepping down amid reports that his partners were upset about the adverse publicity his involvement was generating. As mainly a divorce specialist, Tim Hughes, 36, seemed an unlikely candidate to be the only British member of the former Iraqi strongmanâs international defence team. For one thing, he had no previous experience of a case involving a political prisoner, although last year he did successfully defend a gamekeeper accused of using illegal poisons.Ho ho ho. Mr Hughes was recruited to the 20-strong team by Emmanuel Ludot, a French advocate hired by Saddamâs family, who he got to know during a year working for a Paris law firm. But yesterday, barely a week after landing a role in the worldâs most high-profile criminal trial, Mr Hughes said that he wanted nothing more to do with it. In a statement, he admitted flying to Jordan last week at the invitation of Mr Ludot for what he thought was a conference about the legal issues surrounding Saddamâs detention and trial. But "when I arrived I found myself plunged into a strategy review with Saddam Husseinâs defence committee," he said. To make matters worse, Mr Hughes was then - apparently unwittingly - cast in the role of the defenceâs press spokesman. "Calls were coming in from the worldâs media," he said. "I was the only natural English speaker there, so they asked me to deal with a call from the BBC and then to be the groupâs spokesman." It was this media attention which appears to have so upset his colleagues back at Bevan Ashford in Tiverton, Devon. The firm specialises in commercial matters rather than criminal ones. And although it boasts that its clients include "many household names", it has evidently decided that a line had to be drawn at the worldâs most infamous tyrant. On his return from Jordan, Mr Hughes was summoned to a meeting with his partners at which it was decided that his "involvement was going beyond the original purpose of his visit". "I shall not be going out there again," he said. A spokesman for Bevan Ashford yesterday denied that there had been a "showdown" with Mr Hughes. "We are looking at internal procedures to see if there are any lessons to be learnt," he said. He stressed that neither Mr Hughes nor the firm had ever taken on Saddam Hussein as a client. "The matter is now closed." Yesterday, Mr Hughes, a father of three, was back on more familiar territory at Exeter magistratesâ court representing a woman accused of stealing £30 of picture frames from Cancer Research UK. Not Scrappleface! Itâs true, apparently. Posted by: Bulldog 2004-07-07 |
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