President Saddam Hussein called on Iraqis to ‘unite, rise up and resist the invaders’, at his show trial yesterday.
This prompted chief judge Rauf Abdel Rahman to banish journalists from the courtroom.
Just before the media was turned out of the gallery and the cameras switched off, Saddam told the judge he had no right to interrupt him as he had been appointed by American occupiers.
‘This is a criminal court, it does not have to do with politics, reply to the charge directed to you,’ Rahman said.
‘I am the head of state,’ Saddam replied, ‘what puts you here? It’s politics’.
He said the court is a ‘comedy against Saddam Hussein and his comrades’ and continued with his prepared speech referring to the sectarian attacks since the bombing of the mosque at Samarra.
The Iraqi president said: ‘My conscience tells me that the great people of Iraq have nothing to do with these acts.’
He cautioned Iraqis ‘you will live in darkness and rivers of blood’ if they allowed themselves to be provoked into civil war.
Praising the insurgency, he said: ‘In my eyes, you are the resistance to the American invasion.’
Judge Rahman interrupted: ‘You are being tried in a criminal case for killing innocent people, not because of your conflict with America.’
‘What about the innocent people who are dying in Baghdad? I am talking to the Iraqi people,’ Saddam retorted.
The judge said he wanted ‘to keep you on the right path’.
Saddam ignored him and continued to address the Iraqi people, saying: ‘Keep on the march of achievements, of revolutions and uprising against the foreigner.
‘Stick to this, it is only a short time and the sun will rise.’
He continued: ‘I call on the people to start resisting the invaders instead of killing each other.’
At this point the judge closed off proceedings to the press.
Earlier during the day, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother and former intelligence chief, said he was brought to court because he refused a senior post in exchange for his co-operation in overthrowing the legitimate Iraqi government in 2003.
Barzan al-Tikriti denied he took part in a crackdown against Shia members of al-Dawa party in al-Dujail village who tried to assassinate Saddam in 1982.
Barzan told the judge that he was before the court, not because he had a role in the al-Dujail case, but because he refused an offer for a senior post in Iraq if he helped the invasion.
