#1 Ill Saddam witness gives evidence
Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 4:40 pm
You can charge me, I'm the fucking President!
The event in question was chosen because it's the one they have the most easily to gather evidence for it. In this case they got a small mountain. He guilty and he's gonna pay for it.A former Iraqi security officer who is seriously ill has become the first witness to testify in the trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Waddah al-Sheikh gave a statement in hospital on Sunday about the killing of 143 people in Dujail in 1982.
Court officials said they did not want to risk waiting until the trial resumed in November to get his testimony.
Meanwhile, two people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack near an Iraqi police patrol in Baghdad on Monday.
Main witness
Court officials "have recorded the testimony of this individual," a court source told news agency AFP.
"His words were recorded and written down on paper."
Mr Sheikh, who was working for Iraq's main intelligence agency at the time of the massacre, is considered one of the main witnesses in the trial. He is suffering from cancer and there are fears that he may not have long to live.
Saddam Hussein is charged with the killing of more than 140 men in the mostly Shia town of Dujail after a failed assassination attempt against him.
The former Iraqi leader and seven other defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The trial was suspended until 28 November after several prosecution witnesses failed to turn up for the opening day on 19 October.
Monday's car bomb attack occurred in the capital's north-eastern district of Shaab, where insurgents had kidnapped and murdered one of Saddam Hussein's defence lawyers last week.