Saddam back in court to hear defence witnesses

BAGHDAD, May 17 (Reuters) Saddam Hussein returned to court today to hear testimony from defence witnesses for some of his co-defendants, who like the ousted Iraqi president have denied crimes against humanity.

The judge adjourned the trial until May 22 after the court heard witnesses for four ex-local Baath Party officials accused with Saddam and three other senior figures over a bloody crackdown after a failed assassination bid on him in 1982.

Judge Raouf Abdel Rahman said he would study a formal defence request to allow Saddam and his half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti to give testimony for their co-defendants.

Saddam has in the past declared personal responsibility for all actions of the Iraqi state during his three-decade rule.

Saddam, Barzan and two other senior Baath party figures being tried with them have not been present since they lodged not guilty pleas to formal charges read out on Monday. Saddam refused to plead but the judge ruled he had denied the charge.

The defence case opened on Monday with witnesses givingevidence for the four local party militants on trial for the same reprisals, in which 399 people from the Shi'ite town ofDujail were variously imprisoned, deported, killed, tortured or hanged after the attempt on Saddam's life there.

Saddam intervened briefly as witnesses spoke for two Baath party members from Dujail. He joked, after a fervent plea of innocence from one accused, that his co-defendant was nervous.

Saddam and his co-accused face death by hanging if convicted.

At one stage, when the chief prosecutor questioned how awitness could remember in detail events from his childhood, Saddam, 69, intervened from the dock, saying he had similar doubts about prosecution witnesses heard months ago.

''A child, because of his nature, and this is somethingpsychologists know, has a lot of imagination,'' Saddam said.

NERVOUS DEFENDANTS Three witnesses spoke for Mohammed Azawi, a local Baath official, and three for Abdullah Kadhem al-Ruwaid, another minor party official who is also accused of denouncing whole families for taking part in the assassination plot. When Azawi exclaimed ''I did nothing, I swear to God'', Saddam turned aside and, according to a court interpreter, remarked with a smile: ''These Dujailis are tense people!''.

A verdict could come within two or three months, officials say. But any execution of Saddam would be delayed by appeals and possibly up to a dozen other trials for war crimes and genocide.

The defence witnesses so far, many of them close relatives of the four Baath officials, have testified to their good characters and said the accused also suffered in the repression that followed the attack on Saddam's convoy.

Today's first witness, speaking anonymously behind a screen like most others, said of Ruwaid: ''Abdullah is a farmer ... He helped everybody in Dujail ... Dujail is a small place.

We all know each other.

''He was harmed, like all Dujailis,'' said the man, adding that the defendant had been ''like a father'' to him.

Saddam, Barzan, former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan and Baathist judge Awad al-Bandar say they legally punished criminals who tried to kill the head of state.

Saddam also insisted he had immunity because he was still legally in power -- a defence dismissed by the Kurdish judge, who clashed sharply with defence lawyers on Tuesday over their insistence on referring to their client as ''Mr. President''.

REUTERS