A French lawyer known for his notorious clients said yesterday that he would be ready to defend Saddam Hussein and that the former Iraqi leader must be presumed innocent at any trial.
Mr Jacques Verges, who has represented Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and international guerrilla Carlos the Jackal, said hiding Saddam away was against international conventions.
US troops captured the deposed leader on Saturday, but his whereabouts remain a mystery. "If he had to be prosecuted tomorrow, he would have to be presumed innocent," Mr Verges told French radio station Europe 1, adding that Saddam should be allowed to receive visitors if he is held as a prisoner of war.
Asked if he was ready to defend Saddam, Mr Verges said: "Yes." But he made clear he was only speaking hypothetically.
Saddam could be tried by a special tribunal set up last week by Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council with a mandate covering war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Charges against him could focus on the campaign against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, the use of chemical weapons on Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians, the suppression of the Kurdish and Shia uprisings in 1991, the punishment of the Marsh Arabs and the forced expulsions of ethnic minorities in the north.
Mr Verges warned such charges could implicate Western leaders who once backed Saddam.
"If he is judged and treated like a pariah, clearly his defence counsel would have to say 'but this pariah was the friend of all the Western heads of state.
"He was not only their friend but their ally'," Mr Verges said.