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Saddam pleads innocent, gets into scuffle
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-20 19:35
A defiant Saddam Hussein quarreled with judges and
scuffled with guards at the opening of his long-awaited trial Wednesday,
rejecting the tribunal's right to judge him and insisting he is still the
president of Iraq.
Saddam Hussein holds a copy of the Quran as
his trial begins in a heavily fortified courthouse in Baghdad's Green
Zone, Iraq, Wednesday Oct. 19, 2005. Hussein pleaded innocent to charges
including pre-meditated murder and torture and argued with the judge,
challenging the legitimacy of the court as his first trial for alleged
atrocities by his toppled regime opened Wednesday in the former
headquarters of his Baath Party. [AP] |
Sitting inside a white pen with metal bars, Saddam appeared gaunt and frail
and his salt-and-pepper beard was unkempt as he pleaded innocent to charges of
murder, torture, forced expulsions and illegal detentions. He wore a suit with a
white shirt and no tie.
Gone were the Homburg hat, the cigar, the shotgun fired from a reviewing
stand. So were a few pounds after nearly two years in an American military
prison. Still, the swagger and the smirk remained, the bearing of a man
accustomed to 23 years of unchallenged power.
If convicted, the 68-year-old Saddam and seven of his
regime's henchmen who appeared with him in the hearing could face the death
penalty for their role in the 1982 killing of nearly 150 people from the mainly
Shiite town of Dujail north of Baghdad after a failed attempt on Saddam's life.
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