Iraqi PM rules out Saddam trial outside Iraq
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-10-22 19:29

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has ruled transferring the trial of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein outside the country.

"The process is a purely Iraqi affair, which should take place on the (Iraqi) territory and it is out of the question to transfer it anywhere else," Jaafari told reporters after breaking the Ramadan fast.

"The idea of such a transfer should not even enter our heads," he said.

Jaafari suggested that the murder of the lawyer of a co-defendant of Saddam Hussein, who was kidnapped just a day after the opening of the former Iraqi dictator's trial over a massacre of Shiites, could be aimed at getting the trial moved out of Iraq.

They "wanted perhaps, through this act, to achieve this objective," he said.

"They think that in acting in this way, they can pose a challenge to the court and let it be known that the lawyer was killed because he was defending one of the officials of the former regime," he said.

The body of the lawyer, Saadoun Janabi, an attorney for Awad Hamad al-Bandar al-Sadun, one of Saddam's seven co-defendants, was found with bullet wounds to the head in the impoverished northern Baghdad neighbourhood of Ur on Friday.

Saddam and the co-defendents went on trial Wednesday for crimes against humanity over a 1982 murder of almost 150 Shiites.

Jaafari expressed "surprise" at the adjournment of the hearing to November 28 so that witnesses could be questioned about the massacre.

"We have waited a long time to hold the trial and we do not understand why it has been adjourned to such a late date," he said, saying he was "raising simple questions and did not want to interfere in the tribunal's decision".

Earlier Jaafari's spokesman said the lawyer's murder "has all the fingerprints of kidnappings and killings by terrorist groups".

"This cowardly act ... attempts to divert attention from bringing justice to those who violated the law and disrespected human lives," the spokesman Leith Kubba said.