Walkout at Saddam trial, bombs kill 30

BAGHDAD – Bombs killed at least 30 people in Baghdad and wrecked the tomb of Saddam Hussein’s father yesterday as the ousted leader was in court for the first time since days of sectarian violence pitched Iraq toward civil war.

Saddam’s two lead defence counsel walked out within minutes of the trial restarting after a two-week pause when requests for a further adjournment and the removal of the chief judge were rejected. Officials said court-appointed lawyers would defend Saddam, as they had done since a previous walkout a month ago.Saddam sat silent but his half-brother objected loudly.Saddam ended a hunger strike for “health reasons”, lawyers said before returning to the trial, which has been troubled by charges of political bias and killings of two defence attorneys.Twenty-three people were killed when a bomb left at a fuel station in eastern Baghdad blasted people lining up for petrol, police said.At least seven were killed in two other explosions, including an apparent car bomb in a busy street across the Tigris river from the trial in one of Saddam’s former palaces.Some 130 people were wounded in all, police said, in the bloodiest onslaught in the capital in two months and among the most serious since an alleged al Qaeda bomb destroyed a Shi’ite shrine in Samarra on Wednesday, sparking tit-for-tat reprisals.US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, closely engaged in efforts to forge a national unity government, told CNN that Iraq “came to the brink of civil war” but said the present “crisis is over”.He warned, however, that further flare-ups were possible.Two British soldiers were killed in southern Iraq and US forces reported the death of an American soldier.A Sunni mosque in Baghdad was earlier damaged by a bomb, police said, and police found nine bodies near the religiously mixed city of Baquba, scene of several recent sectarian attacks.A mortar caused damage near a television station controlled by the biggest Sunni political group, the Iraqi Islamic Party.The dome of the shrine Saddam had erected over his father’s originally modest grave in his Sunni home town of Tikrit was damaged, local residents said, and windows and doors were blown out when explosives went off.The former president, who has justified oppressive policies over three decades as necessary to holding Iraq together, sat silent in the dock but his half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti launched into a familiar shouting match with the judge, who ordered him: “Shut up and sit down!” Barzan had complained about the court-appointed lawyers, saying it was the “law of the jungle”, but the judge told him all he had to do was have his own counsel return.With no witnesses scheduled, the prosecution presented documents they said showed Saddam knew of the killings of some 148 Shi’ite men from the town of Dujail, where the former president survived an assassination attempt in 1982.- Nampa-ReutersOfficials said court-appointed lawyers would defend Saddam, as they had done since a previous walkout a month ago.Saddam sat silent but his half-brother objected loudly.Saddam ended a hunger strike for “health reasons”, lawyers said before returning to the trial, which has been troubled by charges of political bias and killings of two defence attorneys.Twenty-three people were killed when a bomb left at a fuel station in eastern Baghdad blasted people lining up for petrol, police said.At least seven were killed in two other explosions, including an apparent car bomb in a busy street across the Tigris river from the trial in one of Saddam’s former palaces.Some 130 people were wounded in all, police said, in the bloodiest onslaught in the capital in two months and among the most serious since an alleged al Qaeda bomb destroyed a Shi’ite shrine in Samarra on Wednesday, sparking tit-for-tat reprisals.US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, closely engaged in efforts to forge a national unity government, told CNN that Iraq “came to the brink of civil war” but said the present “crisis is over”.He warned, however, that further flare-ups were possible.Two British soldiers were killed in southern Iraq and US forces reported the death of an American soldier.A Sunni mosque in Baghdad was earlier damaged by a bomb, police said, and police found nine bodies near the religiously mixed city of Baquba, scene of several recent sectarian attacks.A mortar caused damage near a television station controlled by the biggest Sunni political group, the Iraqi Islamic Party.The dome of the shrine Saddam had erected over his father’s originally modest grave in his Sunni home town of Tikrit was damaged, local residents said, and windows and doors were blown out when explosives went off.The former president, who has justified oppressive policies over three decades as necessary to holding Iraq together, sat silent in the dock but his half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti launched into a familiar shouting match with the judge, who ordered him: “Shut up and sit down!” Barzan had complained about the court-appointed lawyers, saying it was the “law of the jungle”, but the judge told him all he had to do was have his own counsel return.With no witnesses scheduled, the prosecution presented documents they said showed Saddam knew of the killings of some 148 Shi’ite men from the town of Dujail, where the former president survived an assassination attempt in 1982.- Nampa-Reuters