Former US attorney general may join Saddam defence team

AMMAN - Former US attorney general Ramsey Clark is expected to join a legal team seeking to defend former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein before a special Iraqi tribunal, the panel’s chairman Mohammad Rashdan announced Tuesday.

“Negotiations are going on for Clark’s joining of the team,” Rashdan said, without providing details.

Clark will become one of the distinguished members of the panel, that also includes former French foreign minister Roland Dumas and some 20 prominent Arab and non-Arab lawyers who volunteered to defend the former Iraqi leader.

Rashdan also revealed that a “group of Iraqi lawyers will arrive in Amman shortly” to coordinate the group’s efforts. He refused to divulge the names of the lawyers for security reasons.

Under the Iraq Bar Association bylaws, any foreign lawyer seeking involvement in litigation before Iraqi courts should be accompanied by an Iraqi lawyer.

“Contacts are going on among Amman, Paris and Geneva to ensure travel of the legal team at the opportune time for defending President Saddam,” Rashdan said.

Ensuring physical protection of the team’s members while in Iraq so far represented the thorniest issue after they received death threats, team members said.

Rashdan earlier said his panel was obliged to resort to “private protection” to be provided by certain firms in Iraq after the Iraqi government failed to guarantee safety of the team’s members.

Saddam appeared in public before a special Iraqi court for the first time on July 1, when he refused to sign the indictment list in the absence of his lawyers.

Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi recently called for a “speeding up” of the trial of Saddam and other figures of the previous regime.

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