Saddam excused for a day; trial adjourned until Dec. 21

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein's high-backed black chair was empty in the dock where his co-defendants sat Wednesday for the third day of testimony in their trial.

Two witnesses testified, telling more stories of terrible torture but still producing no evidence directly linking Saddam and his seven co-defendants to the bloody massacre of nearly 150 people in the city of Dujail in 1982.

The court adjourned Wednesday until Dec. 21 to clear the calendar for a national election Dec. 15.

Saddam Hussein was excused from the roughly three-hour session, said Raed Juhi, the investigative judge who prepared the case against the deposed dictator and his co-defendants.

Before the session, Saddam, in his gray suit jacket and white button-up shirt, sat in his chair for one minute before asking the judge to excuse him in a three-minute speech. He gave no reason.

On Tuesday, Saddam had called the court unjust and told the judge to "go to hell" when he refused to delay the proceedings.

The Iraqi judges appeared determined to press on without Saddam, even at the risk of fueling his argument that the process is stacked against him. For Saddam, the risk was losing the televised platform he has exploited with gusto to denounce the judges as servants of the United States.

"I thought Saddam was doing quite well until he skipped class today," said Leila Nadya Sadat, an international criminal law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

This week's testimony by Shiite villagers reflected sectarian tensions that help drive the current conflict between Sunni Arab insurgents, many of them loyal to Saddam, and a Shiite Muslim-led government backed by U.S. troops.

The two men who testified Wednesday said they had been rounded up with hundreds of other Dujail residents after the 1982 assassination attempt and beaten during about four years of detention. The men described crowded, windowless cells, sickening food and drinking water so hot it seemed boiled.

But two key elements of the first witness' testimony fell apart under cross-examination.

The witness said he was being beaten at the headquarters of Saddam's Baath party in Dujail when his interrogator turned to Barazan Ibrahim, the president's half-brother and former chief of intelligence, and asked: "What shall we do with him?"

"Take him. He might be useful," the witness said Ibrahim replied, ordering him transferred to a detention center in Baghdad where many from Dujail reportedly died. It was the first time a defendant in the trial had been tied so directly to the treatment of Dujail detainees.

Ibrahim stood in court to object. Under questioning by the judge, the witness acknowledged that he was blindfolded at the time and believed it was Ibrahim speaking only because other prisoners had told him so.

The judge did not rule whether that hearsay evidence was admissible. Under Iraqi law, he is free to consider it. But the witness' reversal clearly weakened the case against Ibrahim.

There has been no direct testimony so far about the massacre, and the defense argued that the witnesses have not linked it directly to Saddam and the other defendants.

Bodyguard's son

is kidnapped

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Gunmen kidnapped the 8-year-old son of a bodyguard for a judge in Saddam Hussein's trial, the father said Wednesday.

Karim Salam was taken Tuesday as he played in front of his parent's house in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Kamsarah, according to his father, Salam Hirmiz Gorgis.

Gorgis works for one of five judges in the trial of Saddam and seven co-defendants.

Compiled From Knight Ridder Newspapers, Los Angeles Times,

The Washington Post and

The Associated Press.