Saddam lawyers appeal death sentence
Middle East Desk Report

BAGHDAD—Saddam Hussein’s lawyers on Sunday formally appealed the death sentence handed down the ousted Iraqi president for the killing of 148 Shiites, a court spokesman said.
Five Iraqi judges on Nov. 5 sentenced Saddam and two other senior members of his regime to death by hanging for the killings in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, following a 1982 attempt on his life. Under Iraqi law, death sentences are automatically appealed before a higher court within 10 days of their passage. But defense lawyers must file a formal appeal within 30 days, detailing the legal grounds for their action and presenting new evidence that could support their clients’ claims of innocence.
“Today, defense lawyers came to the court and filed an appeal against the death sentence passed against Saddam Hussein and other sentences in the Dujail case,” Raid Juhi, the spokesman of the Iraqi High Tribunal, told Press. Lawyers acting for Saddam Hussein have submitted appeals against the sentences imposed on the ousted leader and his co-defendants in the Dujail trial.
The lawyers submitted appeals on behalf of all seven defendants, including death sentences against Saddam and two other aides, the official said. “They submitted the appeals to the appeal chamber today,” an Iraqi official, who did not wished to be named, told on Sunday. A panel of Iraqi appeal court judges is already is looking into the case and now “obviously has to look into these documents given by the defence lawyers,” he added.
On November 5, Saddam was sentenced to death by hanging for ordering the execution of 148 Shiites from the village of Dujail after he escaped an assassination bid there in 1982. His half-brother and intelligence chief Barzan al-Trikrit was also sentenced to death, along with Awad Ahmed Al-Bandar, chairman of the so-called Revolutionary Court which oversaw the Shiites’ executions.
Saddam’s former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan received a life sentence, while three Baath party officials from Dujail received 15 years each and a fourth, more junior figure, was cleared. Those condemned to death or life in jail have an automatic right of appeal according to Iraq law. Saddam and six other former regime officials are currently also on trial in a separate genocide case involving the massacre of 182,000 Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988.
A U.S. airstrike destroyed a foreign fighter safe house in a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, killing five insurgents, two women and a child, the U.S. military said on Sunday. The raids were in the Garma area, near Falluja, where an F- 16 jet crashed last week during heavy fighting between Sunni insurgents and U.S. forces. Its pilot’s body disappeared from the crash site, possibly spirited away by rebel fighters. Residents in the village of al-Lihaib near Garma told a local Iraqi journalist that one house was leveled in Saturday night’s air raid, killing nine members of the same family — three women, three girls and three boys — and wounding a man.