Saddam to Boycott 'comedy' Trial

Saddam Hussein no longer wants to attend his trial for genocide, he told the chief judge in a letter released today, saying he was angry at not being allowed to speak after raising his hand.

In a handwritten note to Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, Saddam complained about what he called repeated "insults" during the trial over his role in the 1987-88 military campaign against the Kurds, in which thousands died.

"I wasn't given the chance to speak when I tried to clarify the truth by raising my hand three times," Saddam wrote in the one-page letter dated yesterday. At the time, he said, he wanted to respond to a prosecution allegation that he had stashed away $10bn (£5.07bn) of public money in overseas banks.

Referring to himself in the third person, the former dictator said: "Saddam, who taught pride and dignity to many people, refuses to attend (the trial) and be subjected to insult by agents and their followers."

Referring to the trial as "this new comedy", Saddam told he judge he could "do whatever you want" in response to the boycott.

The letter, handed to the press by Saddam's lawyers, referred to him as "president of the republic and commander in chief of the mujahedeen (holy warriors) armed forces".

The current hearing, in which Saddam and six former members of his regime face charges of war crimes and genocide, is separate to the trial which saw Saddam sentenced to death last month for crimes against humanity, linked to an earlier massacre in the Iraqi town of Dujail.

Much of the testimony in the current trial has been harrowing accounts by Kurdish survivors of massacres the prosecution claims were carried out by Saddam's regime.

Yesterday, a Kurdish teacher described the death of 40 fellow villagers, including his mother and two daughters, in a chemical attack in 1988.

"My wife was lying on her back, holding my two daughters - Shovan, six months, and Tabga, four years, tight in her arms," Abdulla Qadir Abdulla, 58, told the court, saying his wife had only survived because she took an antidote.

The charges on which Saddam has already been sentenced to hang were chosen for the first trial as they were considered relatively straightforward and simple to prove.