Lawyer for Hussein codefendants is slain
Two are shot; debate is revived over a fair trial
BAGHDAD -- Gunmen shot two lawyers representing codefendants in the trial of Saddam Hussein yesterday, killing one and seriously wounding the other, a senior Interior Ministry official said. The attack revived debate over whether Hussein, the former leader, can get a fair trial in Iraq.
The shooting of Adil Zubeidi, who was defending Barzan Ibrahim, a half-brother of Hussein and a former head of Iraq's intelligence service, and the former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, was the second assassination of an attorney representing one of the seven codefendants in Hussein's war-crimes trial.
The day after the trial opened on Oct. 19, a defense lawyer, Saadoun Janabi, was kidnapped by armed men from his office in Baghdad, and his body was found the next day with two bullet holes in the head.
Janabi represented Awad Haman Bander, who was the chief judge of Hussein's Revolutionary Court while Hussein was in power.
It was unclear whether the attacks would affect the resumption of Hussein's case on Nov. 28. After Janabi was killed, lawyers for Hussein and his codefendants said they were boycotting the trial for security reasons, and demanded that it be moved to another country.
''It seriously raises concerns about the security of holding the tribunal in Baghdad," a Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity. The attack yesterday occurred about 1 p.m. in the Adil neighborhood of western Baghdad, one of the most dangerous areas of the capital, when the car in which the two lawyers were traveling was ambushed by gunmen firing from another vehicle, according to Colonel Mohammed Nuaimi of Iraq's Interior Ministry.
He said that Zubeidi had been killed and that his colleague, Thamer Hamoud Kuzaie, had been wounded. Nuaimi said both were representing Ibrahim and Ramadan.
The trial centers on charges that Hussein and the others, all high-ranking members of the government who were in power at the time, were behind the executions of 148 Shi'ite Muslim men and boys from the town of Dujail, which is 35 miles north of Baghdad.
The executions were reported to have taken place after Saddam's motorcade was ambushed there in July 1982 in a failed assassination attempt.
Human rights activists, political analysts and legal specialists have questioned whether Hussein can get a fair trial in a country that he ruled, often ruthlessly, for 24 years and that is now run by a government that came to power under US military occupation. After the attack yesterday, attorneys for Saddam and his family renewed their demand that the trial be moved.
''We don't believe that a fair trial can take place in such security conditions," the Reuters news agency quoted Issam Ghazzawi, a spokesman for Hussein's defense team, as saying in Amman, Jordan.
''There can be no fair trial without providing security for witnesses, judges, and lawyers on an equal footing. ''No trial can take place in such conditions," Reuters quoted Ghazzawi as saying.
Jaafar Mousawi, the prosecutor in the case, said that the killings should not affect the trial.
''Of course the defense commission will demand moving the trial outside of Iraq," Mousawi said.
''But this is a general situation -- it's not only against the lawyers or the trial," he said. ''The situation in the country in general is not safe."
In a telephone interview from London, Abdel Haq Alani, a legal adviser to a Hussein daughter, Raghad, who is in charge of her father's defense, said that the United States should be held responsible for the killings because it has failed to bring safety and security to Iraq, which he said was the duty of an occupying power.
''It's one thing to topple a regime, but it's another thing to dismantle a state and not replace it with an apparatus to maintain order," Alani said.
''The trial is totally meaningless. It's a political issue, not a legal issue," Alani said. ''The procedures and the outcome were decided a long time ago. The people behind this want a lynching; they don't want justice."
Some members of Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, which dominated Saddam's government, have accused Iraq's Shi'ite-led police and security forces of engaging in political assassinations and the mass killings of Sunnis.
Some have even suggested that Interior Ministry death squads were behind the killing of Janabi and Sunni leaders.
Defense lawyers in the trial said they have rejected Interior Ministry bodyguards because they don't trust them.
