Judge on Hussein tribunal said to be slain
BAGHDAD -- A judge on the special tribunal that will put Saddam Hussein and members of his former regime on trial was assassinated yesterday in the Iraqi capital, according to an Iraqi police official and a media report.
Judge Barwez Mohammed Mahmoud and a relative were killed in northern Baghdad's Azamiyah district, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Al-Arabiya, the Dubai-based satellite TV news network, also reported that the judge and a relative died in an attack. The judge's exact relationship to the other victim wasn't immediately known. The network said they lived in the same house in northern Baghdad, near the attack site.
The assassination occurred as more than 2,000 Iraqis protested outside a medical clinic in Hillah, a city 60 miles south of the capital where a suicide car bomber killed 125 people a day earlier.
The protesters in Hillah, braving the threat of another attack as they waved clenched fists, condemned foreign fighters and chanted ''No to terrorism!"
Another car bombing this morning killed at least six Iraqi National Guard members and wounded 28 in Baghdad. A police source told Reuters the bomb targeted Iraqis signing up for the army.
Mahmoud's role on the Hussein tribunal was unclear, but the law establishing it called for up to 20 investigative judges and up to 20 prosecutors. It also said the tribunal would have one or more trial chambers, each with five judges. The judges have not been identified in public because of concerns for safety.
A day before the killings, five former members of Hussein's regime, including one of his half brothers, were referred to trial for crimes against humanity.
The announcement Monday by the tribunal marked the first time that the special court issued referrals, similar to indictments, which are the final step before trials start. No date was given for that trial.
The five referred to trial Monday included Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, one of Hussein's half brothers, and former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan. The three others were senior Ba'ath Party members. Hussein was captured in December 2003, and others have been in custody for nearly two years.
US military officials transferred 12 of the top defendants to Iraqi custody in June with the handover of sovereignty. They're being held at an undisclosed location near Baghdad International Airport, west of the capital.
Yesterday's demonstration outside the medical clinic in Hillah was among several developments:
Two US soldiers were killed yesterday in a vehicle accident in Beiji, 155 miles north of the capital, bringing the number of American dead in the Iraqi war to 1,499.
Insurgents, fighting both American forces and the Iraqi government, released a video yesterday of French journalist Florence Aubenas, 43, kidnapped nearly two months ago. The 43-year-old correspondent for the French daily Liberation appeared alone in front of a maroon-colored background, pleading for help.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror group, which has repeatedly seized foreigners and attacked Americans, purportedly claimed responsibility for the suicide car bombing in Hillah.
It was not possible to independently verify the claim, which was posted on the Internet.
The group said it targeted recruits for the Iraqi security services, whom it referred to as ''apostates," but did not mention those killed in a nearby market. The car bomb went off at a site where police and army recruits were lining up for physicals exams at the medical clinic.
In Hillah, relatives and friends screamed and wailed as they gathered around lists of the dead and wounded posted on hospital walls. Relatives who came to identify the dead placed corpses into coffins and put them into pickup trucks to take them away for burial.
Fears that insurgents would target Shi'ite mourners forced authorities to cancel a funeral procession for some victims.
