Guards Remove (yet another) One of Saddam's Lawyers

Guards grabbed Saddam Hussein's only female defense attorney and pulled her from the courtroom Monday, and the chief judge shouted down the deposed Iraqi leader — a raucous start to a new session of his trial.



Defense lawyer Bushra Khalil had been removed from an April trial session for arguing with chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman. Monday's shouting began after the judge told her she was now allowed back in court, but she insisted on knowing why she had been removed in the first place.
"Please, I want to know what procedures have I broken," Khalil said, but Abdel-Rahman snapped at her, "Sit down."

"I would like to know what they are so that I do not repeat them," she said. "Sit down," the judge shouted again, then yelled at the guards to take her away. Khalil pulled off her judicial robe in anger and threw it on the floor, then tried to push away guards who grabbed her hands, yelling, "Get away from me."

So how long did it take for the judges foolish action to be thrown straight back in his face ?

Well only about ten minutes it seems....

monday's first witness was a former staffer of the Revolutionary Court, Murshid Mohammed Jassim. He testified on behalf of defendant Awad al-Bandar, a judge accused of convicting the 148 Dujail residents without a proper trial.

Jassim, an elderly man who shook his cane at times as he spoke, acknowledged that he did not work at the court at the time of the Dujail trial in 1984. But he insisted the court was "the most fair, the most just ... (Al-Bandar) is a quiet, polite, fair man."

He said the Revolutionary Court always ensured that defendants had lawyers and that Saddam's regime never intervened in its proceedings. Referring to the ejection of al-Khalil, al-Bandar asked Jassim, "Were defense lawyers ever thrown out of court when they tried to make an argument?"

No, Jassim said, "lawyers were always treated with respect in accordance with the law."

Read the full article Here

Nobody is arguing that Saddam should not be put on trial for his barbaric actions. However this trial has already past it's sell by date, if it claims to represent any kind of fairness and justice.

Of course many people say that Saddam does not deserve a fair trial as he was far from fair and just when he was the President. Well the reply to that is simple. We are not Saddam. We claim to be better than people like Saddam as we claim to have freedom, democracy and justice. How people will judge the actions in court today will certainly not be helped by the knowledge that the judge is an alleged victim of the defendants crimes. That alone would never be allowed to happen in any modern democratic court of law.

Surely it is time to put this circus to bed and for Saddam to be judged by an international court set up to judge the dictator and his actions under International law. Of course we all know that such a fair trial would never happen as Saddam could easily show how much support ( military, financial and chemical) he had from Western governments and companies whilst he was openly committing his sickening crimes. We could for example ask Mr Rumsfeld about the now infamous picture of him with Saddam. Sadly, the honesty of his reply would be somewhere east, west, south and north of the truth.