IRAQ: Senior legal sources vowed to go ahead with the trial of Saddam Hussein today, after a plot was uncovered to assassinate the chief investigative judge.
The plot was the latest attack aimed at stopping the trial. Two of Saddam's defence lawyers have been murdered and prosecution witnesses threatened.
Col Anwar Qadir, a police commander in Kirkuk, said officers had arrested eight men found with bomb-making equipment, maps and a document signed by the one-time Saddam confidant Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, ordering the killing of Raid Juhi, who has led the case against the deposed Iraqi dictator and his former senior henchmen.
Al-Douri has been on the run since the fall of the Ba'athist regime in April 2003. Since then, according to Iraqi and US authorities, he has been an influential figure in the insurgency.
Rejecting criticisms that a fair trial of the former dictator was rapidly becoming impossible, a senior legal source close to the special tribunal said: "Saddam was the president of Iraq. He is alleged to have committed crimes in Iraq. He will from today be tried in Iraq according to Iraqi law."
The official, who requested anonymity, rejected calls for the trial to be delayed or moved and insisted that "a correct and proper hearing is assured".
Prosecution witnesses are due to take the stand, some from behind a protective screen, after a similar attempt was abandoned five weeks ago.
The court will hear testimonies relating to the massacre of more than 140 Shias by Iraqi security forces in Dujail following a botched assassination attempt on the president in 1982. If found guilty, Saddam and seven other defendants, including his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and the former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan, face the death penalty.
Col Anwar told the Guardian that the men arrested in Kirkuk were Saddam loyalists from Tikrit, "working under the control of al-Douri". "They were senior members of the underground Ba'ath party, carrying a message aiming at the trial," he said.
The letter ordered the group to "mobilise the party apparatus to disrupt trial day and to hit the top people [ in the trial]". It continued: "Raid Juhi is a base person, and he should be killed."
Staging a credible trial of the former president in Baghdad has proved a political and security nightmare for the Iraqi government and its US backers. Following the murder of two of Saddam's lawyers, the entire defence team threatened to boycott the trial unless they received guarantees of US protection.
The dire security situation led to calls to move the trial away from Baghdad. But the trial judge, Rizgar Amin, insisted a fair trial was still possible.
Yesterday the former US attorney general Ramsey Clarke, renowned for his opposition to the Vietnam war, said he was on his way to Baghdad to help Saddam. Mr Clarke, who in the past has also spoken in defence of Slobodan Milosevic, told Reuters: "A fair trial in this case is absolutely imperative for historical truth. It is absolutely essential that the court is legal in its constitution."