MercuryNews.com | 09/07/2005 | Saddam family lawyer denies he has confessed to killings

MercuryNews.com | 09/07/2005 | Saddam family lawyer denies he has confessed to killings





Posted on Wed, Sep. 07, 2005


Saddam family lawyer denies he has confessed to killings

By Richard A. Oppel Jr.
New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has confessed to crimes in meetings with investigators for the special tribunal that will try him later this year, President Jalal Talabani said in a televised interview Tuesday night. But a lawyer for Saddam's family dismissed the statement as a ``fabrication.''

Speaking on the state-run Al-Iraqiya network, Talabani said investigators had told him the ``good news'' that Saddam confessed to ordering the Al-Anfal massacre against the Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988 and to ordering other executions.

``He confessed about the Anfal executions, and the orders issued by his name,'' Talabani said. ``Saddam should be executed 20 times.''

It was not clear from the interview whether Talabani was saying that Saddam had acknowledged that his actions were criminal or that the former leader had merely admitted he had ordered killings he believed were proper. In the past he has not denied that he ordered people killed.

Iraqi officials say Saddam's first trial is expected to begin Oct. 19, when he faces charges that he ordered the killing of nearly 150 men and boys from the Shiite village of Dujail, 35 miles north of Baghdad, after a failed assassination attempt against him there in 1982.

If convicted, Saddam could be hanged soon afterward, forgoing the need for other prosecutions of charges of crimes against humanity, Iraqi officials have said.

Fighting against Sunni Arab insurgents continued to rage in western and northern Iraq. Residents fled the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar to take shelter in camps outside the northern city as fighting continued between U.S. and Iraqi forces and insurgents who have controlled much of the city for almost a year. Residents complained of severe food shortages, and news agencies reported that the fighting had killed and wounded civilians and that residents were bracing for a new round of combat.

Insurgents used a large roadside bomb to kill one U.S. soldier in Tal Afar on Monday, the military said. U.S. troops have been fighting since May to wrest control of the city from insurgents who moved in after the military largely abandoned Tal Afar last year.

In western Iraq, military jets launched two airstrikes against insurgents near the Syrian border Tuesday, the latest assault against militants who control much of the desolate badlands of western Al-Anbar province that are home turf to the most hardened elements of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

Shortly after midnight Tuesday, jets bombed two bridges across the Euphrates River near the town of Karabilah that insurgents had used to transport foreign fighters and weapons into central Iraq, a statement by the U.S. Marines said. Hours later, jets flattened a ``foreign fighter safe house'' near the bridges after a gunbattle with Marines there that killed two insurgents, another statement said.

In central Baghdad, two U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday morning and two more were wounded when insurgents attacked their vehicle with a large roadside bomb. Another soldier died Monday in Ar-Ramadi the provincial capital of Al-Anbar, when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb.

Across parts of Iraq with heavy Sunni Arab populations -- especially in western Al-Anbar -- Iraqi security forces are far from being able to battle the insurgency on their own. But in the Shiite-dominated south, a battalion of 1,500 Iraqi soldiers formally assumed control of the holy city of An-Najaf, where Shiite insurgents fought fierce battles with U.S. troops just last year.

The U.S. 155th Brigade Combat Team handed over control of the main military encampment in An-Najaf, Forward Operating Base Hotel, to Iraqi troops during a ceremony Tuesday.

The U.S. commander, Brig. Gen. Augustus L. Collins, said the ``Iraqi army in Najaf can control the area,'' according to a pool report of the ceremony. But the general also emphasized that a contingent of U.S. troops will remain based nearby in case the Iraqi forces need help.



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