Saddam on hunger strike after lawyer killed

updated 5:36 p.m. ET June 21, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein and his seven co-defendants went on a hunger strike Wednesday to protest the shooting death of an attorney on the ousted Iraqi leader’s defense team — the third such killing in the 8-month-old trial.

In other violence, gunmen kidnapped roughly 85 workers north of Baghdad, forcing them into a bus and a minivan, and later released about 30 women and children. About a dozen people were killed across Iraq, and an al-Qaida-led insurgent group announced that it will execute four Russian hostages.

Lawyer Khamis al-Obeidi, a Sunni Arab who represented Saddam and his half brother Barzan Ibrahim, was abducted from his home Wednesday morning by men wearing police uniforms, his colleagues said. His body was found riddled with bullets on a street near the Shiite slum of Sadr City. Police provided a photo of al-Obeidi’s face, head and shoulders drenched in blood.

Saddam’s chief attorney, Khalil al-Dulaimi, blamed the killing on the Interior Ministry, which Sunnis have alleged is infiltrated by so-called Shiite death squads.

“We strongly condemn this act and we condemn the killings done by the Interior Ministry forces against Iraqis,” he said.

There was no comment from the ministry. Hit squads and other gangs are known to often disguise themselves as police officers.

Married with six children, al-Obeidi was the third member of Saddam’s defense team to be killed since the trial began Oct. 19.

Intimidation method?
Al-Dulaimi and his colleagues said the brutal slaying was an attempt to intimidate the defense before it begins final arguments July 10, a process that will take about 10 days.

“We consider his killing a message to us in the defense: ‘To continue what you are doing will result in death in broad daylight on the streets of Baghdad.’ It is a message that’s written in blood,” said Mohammed Moneib, an Egyptian lawyer retained by Saddam.

Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said the trial would continue.

“We will defy terrorism,” al-Moussawi told The Associated Press. “We will continue with the trial and will not be deterred,” he said. The prosecution has demanded the death penalty for Saddam in the killing of 148 Shiites during a crackdown against the town of Dujail in the 1980s.

Despite the killing, Saddam’s lawyers said they would forge ahead with their closing arguments.

However, al-Dulaimi told the AP in Amman, Jordan, that Saddam and his co-defendants “went on a hunger strike today to protest the killing of Khamis al-Obeidi.”

“They pledged not to end the strike until international protection is provided to the defense team,” he said.

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