Iraq Notebook
Saddam's legal team threatened

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Related stories Mortar shells, car bomb kill 5 U.S. troops; 20 wounded

Also yesterday, the lone American on Saddam's legal team said he has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare Saddam's detention unconstitutional.

The filing by Washington lawyer Curtis Doebbler, who volunteered his services on the 20-member team with lawyers from Belgium, Britain, France, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Tunisia, asks the court for permission to file an indigent appeal on Saddam's behalf.

The court will have to grant special permission, however, because the documents lack Saddam's signature, something required in court filings.

The court is on a three-month summer break and likely will not act on the request until late September.

Saddam's Jordan-based defense team said Wednesday that a proposed visit to Baghdad to show support for the jailed former president was shelved after death threats were received.

"Saif al-Allah (The Sword of God) group, belonging to the Islamic Jihad, warns all those who defend the criminal file of the cowardly criminal Saddam ... that we will sever your necks before you arrive," one gunman read from a piece of paper in a tape given to Reuters news service.

Abu Ghraib guard also faces indecency counts

WASHINGTON — Additional charges were filed yesterday against one of seven military police soldiers implicated in the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Army officials accused Pfc. Lynndie England of indecent acts with another soldier and indecent exposure, four days before she is supposed to appear at a preliminary court hearing in North Carolina.

Sources said the five modified counts stem from activity seen on numerous digital photographs seized during the investigation. An Army official said none of the charges involves "detainees or Iraqi nationals" but rather England's alleged personal conduct last year while in Iraq.

A spokeswoman at Fort Bragg, N.C., where England is to go before an Article 32 investigation hearing Monday, said she had no information about the modified charges. In dozens of images obtained by The Washington Post, England is captured in various stages of nudity and in explicit sexual poses with a male soldier. Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr., another soldier with the 372nd MP Company, can be seen in some of the photos.
 
Graner, 35, has been charged with abuses and has been described in an Army investigative report as a ringleader in the scandal. He was involved in a romantic relationship with England, 21, and England's attorneys have said their client is six months pregnant with his child.

Also

Saddam Hussein's latest novel contains an apparent reference to the Sept. 11 attacks and returns to his favorite theme of good vs. evil — Arabs and Muslims fighting their enemies in the West. The manuscript of "Get Out, You Damned," found in the Ministry of Culture after Baghdad's fall, appeared Thursday in Asharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arab newspaper. Saddam also has been credited with writing "Zabibah and the King," "The Fortified Citadel" and "Men and a City."

A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq said in a tape obtained yesterday that it was behind the March 31 shooting of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, but said its gunmen left before the bodies were burnt.