Iraq uncovers plot to rocket Saddam’s trial
Allawi survives assassination bid

BAGHDAD (Iraq)—A Sunni Arab insurgent group was plotting to attack the trial of Saddam Hussein when it resumed Monday, Iraq’s national security adviser said Sunday. The statement by national security adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie’s office said the 1920 Revolution Brigades planned to fire rockets at the court building during Monday’s session. Iraqi intelligence uncovered the plot, but the statement did not say whether anyone had been arrested.
Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for the 1982 killing of more than 140 Shiite Muslims in the town of Dujail following an assassination attempt against him there. The defendants face the death penalty if convicted. A crowd hurling shoes, rocks and tomatoes forced former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to cut short a visit on Sunday to Iraq’s holiest Shi’ite shrine during a campaign trip to the city of Najaf, police officers said.
A spokeswoman for Allawi, a secular Shi’ite, said she had no information on the incident but confirmed that Allawi, who is challenging the ruling Shi’ite Islamist Alliance bloc at next week’s parliamentary election, had been in Najaf during the day. A police captain, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a large crowd of worshippers at the Imam Ali mosque hurled sandals and shoes at Allawi — a grave insult in Iraqi culture. A second police officer said some of Allawi’s bodyguards fired in the air to disperse the crowd and that also threw rocks, sticks, tomatoes and other projectiles. Police also intervened to break up the disturbance, he said.
Both policemen said they believed supporters of militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were responsible for the disturbances, though evidence for this was unclear. “When Allawi entered the shrine, a few people, believed to be Sadrists picked up batons and threatened to attack him,” the police captain said at the scene after the incident. “His American and Iraqi guards fired in the air when everyone started throwing shoes and sandals at him.” Other witnesses were unclear as to how far armed bodyguards had accompanied Allawi into the shrine or whether he was accompanied by Westerners, normally barred from such shrines.—Agencies