Saddam still lays claim to Presidency
Appears for trial - Challenges Court’s legitimacy
Foreign Desk Report

BAGHDAD—A defiant Saddam Hussein pleaded innocent to charges of murder and torture as his long-awaited trial began Wednesday with the one-time dictator arguing about the legitimacy of the court and scuffling with guards.
The first session of the trial lasted about three hours, and the judge ordered an adjournment until Nov. 28. Saddam and his seven co-defendants could face the death penalty if convicted for the 1982 massacre of nearly 150 Shiites in the town of Dujail. They are being tried in the former headquarters of Saddam’s Baath Party.
After presiding judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd, read the defendants their rights and the charges against them — which also include forced expulsions and illegal imprisonment — he asked each for their plea. He started with the 68-year-old ousted dictator, saying “Mr. Saddam, go ahead. Are you guilty or innocent”?
Saddam — holding a copy of the Quran he brought with him into the session and held throughout — replied quietly, “I said what I said. I am not guilty,” referring to his arguments earlier in the session. Amin read out the plea, “Innocent”.
The confrontation then became physical. When a break was called, Saddam stood, smiling, and asked to step out of the room. When two guards tried to grab his arms to escort him out, he angrily shook them off. They tried to grab him again, and Saddam struggled to free himself. Saddam and the guards shoved each other and yelled for about a minute.
It ended with Saddam getting his way, and he was allowed to walk independently, with the two guards behind him, out of the room for the break. Many Iraqis and others across the Middle East were glued to their television sets to watch the first-ever criminal trial of an Arab leader.
The proceedings were aired with about a 20-minute delay on state-run Iraqi television and on satellite stations across Iraq and the Arab world. But technical quality was poor, with the sound cutting out frequently and the picture going blank several times.
The panel of five judges will both hear the case and render a verdict in what could be the first of several trials of Saddam for atrocities during his 23-year-rule. The identities of the judges have been a tightly held secret to ensure their safety, though Amin’s name was revealed just before the trial began. The courtroom camera repeatedly focused on him, without showing the others.
Earlier, at the opening of the trial, the ousted Iraqi leader — looking thin with a salt-and-pepper beard in a dark gray suit and open-collared white shirt — stood and asked the presiding judge: “Who are you? I want to know who you are”.
“I do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect to its people, and I retain my constitutional right as the president of Iraq,” he said, brushing off the judge’s attempts to interrupt him. “Neither do I recognize the body that has designated and authorized you, nor the aggression because all that has been built on false basis is false.” He wrote notes on a yellow pad throughout the hearing.
Amin, a Kurd, tried to get Saddam to formally identify himself but Saddam refused and finally sat. Amin read his name for him, calling him the “former president of Iraq,” bringing a protest from Saddam, who insisted he was still in the post. Later, Amin read the defendants their rights and then read the charges, which are the same for all, and told them they face possible execution if convicted. The chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Mousawi, then began outlining the case against the men.