Chicago Tribune

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The trial of Saddam Hussein proceeded Thursday without any of the eight defendants present, after the chief judge ordered them barred from the court.

In the latest twist to the increasingly bizarre effort to bring Saddam and seven of his associates to justice for crimes committed during the former dictator’s rule, judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman cited Article 158 of Iraq’s criminal code, which he said authorizes a judge to prevent the defendants from attending.

“The court has decided to continue to keep them away from the court in the current session and to continue to examine the case against them,” Abdul-Rahman told the court.

Saddam and his three most senior co-defendants had boycotted the previous day’s session to protest the eviction of one of them, Saddam’s half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, on Sunday.

The judge didn’t make it clear whether he was barring the four in retaliation for their boycott, or for their unruly behavior the previous day, when the court erupted in chaos after al-Tikriti was dragged yelling from the court. Saddam, along with his former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, and the former chief of the Revolutionary Court, Awad al-Bandar, then staged a walkout in protest.

The remaining four defendants had shown no inclination to boycott, but the judge said they were also being barred for causing “chaos and noise” outside the courtroom before the session began. He did not elaborate.

With the large wooden dock in the center of the court empty, and the two witnesses who testified hidden for their own safety behind a beige curtain in a corner of the room, the session was an unusually muted affair. The witnesses described how they were tortured and beaten at the Baghdad headquarters of the Mukhabarat, or intelligence agency, after a failed assassination attempt against Saddam in the town of Dujail in 1982.

Saddam and his co-defendants are being tried in connection with the human-rights abuses committed during the crackdown that followed the assassination attempt.

Saddam’s defense lawyers have been boycotting the trial since Sunday to demand the removal of the judge and they also stayed away. Instead, six court-appointed attorneys represented the defendants in their absence.

The new judge has made it plain that he plans to press ahead with the trial regardless of whether the defendants or their lawyers attend, and he made it sternly clear at the first session he attended Sunday that he will not tolerate the kind of antics from the defendants that had repeatedly delayed testimony at previous sessions.

But the eerily empty courtroom raised further questions over the chances that Saddam and his associates will be perceived as having received a fair trial by the Iraqi public.

A Western official familiar with the court’s proceedings said the judge was acting in accordance with Iraqi law in ordering the defendants to stay away. Saddam and his co-defendants were in the building and they watched the trial on television, he said. The defendants have the right to question the witnesses by submitting written questions, he said, but it didn’t appear they had posed any questions.

Earlier sessions had been marked by boisterous attempts by Saddam and other defendants to challenge the judge, the witnesses and the legitimacy of the court in general.

The judge adjourned the trial until Feb. 13.

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