Saddam "Confessed To Crimes"
Saddam 'confessed to crimes'
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117...-23109,00.html
From: Reuters
September 07, 2005
SADDAM Hussein has confessed to crimes and should be hanged "20 times a day", his successor as Iraq's president said today while confirming he will not sign a death warrant himself.
"Saddam deserves a death sentence 20 times a day because he tried to assassinate me 20 times," Jalal Talabani said in a lengthy interview on Iraqiya state television, recalling his own days as a Kurdish rebel leader fighting the Baghdad authorities.
Saddam had confessed to crimes, he said in answer to a question, though it was not clear what details Mr Talabani had of a legal process that is intended to be separate from Iraqi politics.
"There are 100 reasons to sentence Saddam to death," he said, two days after the Shi'ite and Kurdish-led government confirmed the deposed leader will go on trial on October 19, along with several aides, accused of killing 143 Shi'ite villagers after a failed assassination bid at Dujail in 1982.
Last week, Iraq hanged the first three criminals to be sentenced to death since Saddam's overthrow by US forces.
In that case, too, Mr Talabani refused to sign the warrant but handed responsibility to his Shi'ite vice president, Adel Abdel Mehdi. He explained his stance by saying that as leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan he had once signed up his left-wing party to an international ban on capital punishment.
"My not signing does not mean that I will block the decision of the court," Mr Talabani said, while stressing that political pressure would play no part in the judges' decision.
Saddam's main lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, complained after meeting his client today that the October 19 trial date had not been agreed through the Special Tribunal set up to try Saddam and his closest associates.
"Setting a date for the trial within days, weeks or months is unacceptable because the court alleges that it has 36 tonnes of documents and the defence team cannot come to the trial without studying what the court has of evidence," Mr Dulaimi said after his meeting with Saddam.
