Related Event: Iraq in Transition

The trial of Saddam Hussein is to reopen with the former Iraqi leader finally set to face the testimony of his accusers but with his lawyers planning to seek a further delay.

The court already ordered a five-week adjournment after the trial's dramatic opening on October 19 when Saddam and his seven co-defendants were first hauled into the dock on charges of crimes against humanity.

They face the death penalty if convicted but all eight have pleaded not guilty.

Since the trial opening, two lawyers acting for Saddam co-defendants have been murdered and on Saturday Iraqi police announced they had uncovered an Al-Qaeda plot to assassinate the court's presiding judge.

But any further delay in what the Iraqi media is billing as the Trial of the Century is likely to exacerbate growing frustration among the Shiite majority, which suffered heavily at the hands of Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.

Saddam's Jordan-based defence team said several foreign lawyers, including former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, had travelled to Baghdad to join his Iraqi counsel in making the application for more time.

"Clark will challenge the court procedures and then call for the adjournment," Amman team member Ziad Najdawi told AFP.

The defence team announced only last week that it would be attending Monday's hearing, after boycotting all court procedures for the previous month in protest at the security arrangements for its Iraqi counsel.

US officials close to the court said "most" of the defence lawyers had now accepted the arrangements offered for their protection.

But the Amman-based defence team expressed continuing dissatisfaction and made clear that it would be turning up primarily to prevent the court appointing duty attorneys for the defence as it has threatened to do.

Both Iraqi and US officials have accused the defence team of playing for time in a bid to derail the landmark trial, but the judges are under strong international pressure to ensure that Saddam enjoys the justice he is accused of denying his compatriots for so long.

Monday's hearing had been scheduled to mark the start of a four-day session during which the first prosecution witnesses were to be called to the stand.

Some had been expected to testify from behind screens or with faces masked to protect their anonymity.

"It's up to the individual witnesses whether or not they show their faces or whether their identity is disguised in some other way," a US official close to the court told AFP.

The specific charges relate to the killing of 148 men and youths from the Shiite village of Dujail, north of the capital, after the Saddam escaped an assassination attempt there in 1982.

Inside Iraq, the prospect of further delay before Saddam's trial finally gets under way in earnest prompted demonstrations in Shiite areas Sunday.

In the pilgrimage cities of Najaf and Karbala, several hundred people demonstrated to demand that Saddam be hanged after a quick trial.

The leader of the biggest Shiite party in parliament, Abdul Aziz Hakim, accused the judiciary of "weakness" in bringing Saddam to trial, almost two years after his December 2003 capture.

Hakim, who heads the Shiite-based Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), blamed "the intervention of the Americans in the choice of judges, the presence of Baathists in the judicial system and the fear among judges because of the insecurity."

"This government wants to see Saddam dead, it wants him to face the death penalty, because that is the will of the people," he said.

Saddam, still feared by many in Iraq, could face other charges, ranging from the massacre of Kurds in 1988, a brutal crackdown against Shiites in 1991 and crimes committed during the wars against Iran and Kuwait.

Iraqi officials have said they chose to start with the Dujail case because it is relatively straightforward and well documented.

But critics charge that the case was chosen because it lacked the potential of the other cases for stirring up political controversy for Washington, which backed Saddam's regime through the 1980s.

(Source: AFP)