Saddam Trial Hears 'retaliation' Tape

Saddam Hussein's trial in Baghdad has heard tapes purporting to show the former dictator approving the uprooting of farms near the town of Dujail in retaliation for a 1982 assassination attempt.

The crackdown, following an attack on Saddam's motorcade by members of the opposition Dawa party, also saw the execution of 148 Shia Muslim men and boys in the town 40 miles north of Baghdad.

Saddam and his seven co-defendants could face the death penalty if convicted. The trial has continued haltingly since last October, and hearings today were further adjourned until May15.

The tape played to the court showed a voice claimed to be that of one of the defendants, Taha Yassin Ramadan, saying that the levelling of farmland had been nearly finished and that landowners would be compensated.

He said dissidents would be moved out of Dujail and the nearby town of Balad and replaced with more loyal residents, "to create a new city".

"The suspicious elements we will move out, and bring in replacements, meaning we will attempt an operation of changing society, we will greatly change the social reality," the voice said.

The short recording was unclear, and prosecutors did not say where it had been obtained. A voice claimed to be Saddam's asks a few questions and says, "Fine, good night", at the close of the tape.

Shia-dominated Dujail was a centre of opposition to Saddam's Sunni Arab-led regime during the Iran-Iraq war.

The Dawa party, which carried out the 1982 assassination attempt, now makes up one of the most important blocs in Iraq's Shia-controlled parliament. It numbers the prime minister-designate, Jawad al-Maliki, and his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, among its members.

Shia-Sunni tensions in Iraq flared up again over the weekend, with police finding more than two dozen bodies of people believed to have been killed in sectarian attacks.

Many Sunnis believe the Iraqi interior ministry has become infiltrated with Shia groups determined to exact revenge on Iraq's Sunni minority for its years of political dominance.

The Iraqi Islamic party, the main Sunni faction in parliament and a likely participant in the next cabinet, warned of "the repercussions of sectarian cleansing". It urged the new government to stop "the criminal gangs" involved in the killings.

In further violence today, at least six people were killed and as many as 50 were injured in three car bombings in Baghdad.

In today's court hearing, the defendant Barzan Ibrahim accused prosecutors of faking the recording and documents presented in previous hearings of the court.

"Where are you getting these documents? Whose hands are behind them," said Ibrahim, who is Saddam's half-brother and his former intelligence chief. "Forging documents and imitating signatures is an age-old phenomenon."

A report presented today by handwriting experts authenticated 11 documents presented to the court, but said that one by the former Ba'ath party official Mizhar Abdullah Ruwayyid did not match examples of his writing.

The 11 authenticated documents included an order signed by Saddam approving death sentences for 148 Shia. Saddam had earlier refused to give his signature to the court.

The defendants have argued that the executions were a legal response to the assassination attempt. Barzan said today that the defendants were "patriots" who acted within the bounds of the law. "We didn't kill them. The court sentenced them to death. There is a huge difference between killing and transferring the defendants to the court," he said.

But the prosecution has said that the crackdown was a collective punishment that embraced women and children not connected to the motorcade attack.

Testimony earlier in the trial heard of women who had been imprisoned and tortured in Iraqi prisons and of a torture chamber in which people appeared to have been