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Saddam judge offers resignation - official
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-15 09:00
Since the trial opened on Oct. 19, two defense lawyers also have been
assassinated and a third has fled the country. Police also uncovered a plot to
fire rockets at the courtroom in late November.
U.S. Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., met with Amin in late
December and told him to take stronger control of the proceeding.
Amin is a Kurd who before the Saddam trial was virtually unknown outside his
home region.
The trial is scheduled to resume Jan. 24 after a monthlong recess. The
defendants could face death by hanging if convicted.
Senior Iraqi election official Safwat Rashid said certified results from
Iraq's contested elections could be released within a week. But he said that if
any further complaints were received, it could take an additional 10 days to get
final results.
Rashid and other officials said they were expecting a group of assessors from
the International Mission for Iraqi Elections, or IMIE, to issue a preliminary
report on the results Sunday or Monday.
An IMIE official, Mazin Shuaib, confirmed an interim report would be issued
within days but said the team's final report would take about another week.
The assessors said they would release full uncertified results shortly after
the report. Political parties and groups will then have time to file further
complaints.
"There will be two days to receive the complaints from the political entities
and the concerned parties," general director of Iraq's elector commission, Adel
al-Lami, told Pan-arab Al-Arabiya television. "It will take another two days to
look into these complaints, and then decide whether they are accepted or
rejected."
He said if the complaints are accepted it "will take 10 days to respond."
Final election results have been delayed by Sunni Arab complaints of fraud.
Although leading politicians have expressed hopes a government could be formed
in February, most experts and officials agree it could take two to three months,
as it did after the January 2005 elections for an interim government.
The governing United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite religious bloc, has a strong
lead, according to preliminary results. But it won't win enough seats in the
275-member parliament to avoid forming a coalition with Sunni Arab and Kurdish
parties.
In other developments Saturday:
? Britain's Foreign Office said Phil Sands, a British journalist kidnapped in
Iraq, was rescued by chance on Dec. 31 after U.S. soldiers raided the farmhouse
where he was being held on the outskirts of Baghdad.
? Iraqi and U.S. officials said they were working to free Jill Carroll, a
female American journalist kidnapped off a Baghdad street a week ago, but they
had not yet made contact with her captors.
? Gunmen killed a Shiite imam in northern Baghdad, police Maj. Falah
al-Mohammadawi said.
? Police found the body of a man — his legs and hands bound — who had been
shot in the head, Capt. Firas Qiti said.
? The lawyer of former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz appealed
Saturday for President Bush to release his client for medical reasons. The
lawyer has said Aziz has lost much weight and suffered several slight heart
attacks in detention.
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