james Brown served time in prison.
What I want to know is what the guy who put the capes on James Brown did for a living while Brother James was in jail.
Posted on 10/13/2005 6:48:34 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LONDON (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's defense lawyers will argue that he has immunity from prosecution at his trial in Iraq later this month, according to a London-based member of his legal team.
Lawyer Abdel Haq Alani told the BBC the former president will challenge the legality of the special tribunal, due to open inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone on October 19.
"He had full immunity under the prevailing Iraqi constitution and you cannot have a retroactive legislation that removes that immunity," Alani said in an interview with the BBC's "Newsnight" program late on Thursday.
Iraqi officials say the only charge against Saddam so far is the killing of more than 140 men in the mostly Shi'ite village of Dujail after a failed 1982 assassination attempt against him.
Alani said the defense will argue that those killed had been found guilty under Iraq's laws and Saddam's only role was to sign their death warrants.
"These people were tried and found guilty and sentenced to death according to the Iraqi criminal code," he told the BBC.
Alani, who told Reuters in September that Saddam had been denied his legal rights, said he still thought the former Iraqi president would not have a fair trial.
"A fundamental element of having justice is to see that there is a fair and impartial trial," he told the BBC. "That I think is not happening in Iraq now."
Despite concerns about the trial, Alani said Saddam had a positive outlook.
"He is in high spirits and is very defiant," he said.
The BBC said Saddam's defense team has just received an 800-page bundle outlining the prosecution case.
The report said many of the pages they have been sent are unreadable and they still have no charge details.
Saddam, who has been held by U.S. forces since they captured him in 2003, sacked his defense team in August to bring in a more professional group.
Alani, an Iraqi born barrister, has assembled a legal team with Khalil Dulaimi, who is based in Baghdad and is the only lawyer who has so far been allowed to meet Saddam.
They have approached British lawyer Anthony Scrivener, who has been involved in some of Britain's most high profile trials, to help defend Saddam, according to the BBC.
No one at Scrivener's office could be reached for comment.
Scrivener helped quash the murder convictions of the so-called "Guildford Four," a group of men who spent 15 years in jail wrongly convicted of an Irish Republican Army bombing that killed five people in 1974.
...and if that don't work, he'll release the giant spiders!!
Doogle
Kill Him!
Where is Ramsey Clark? Don't tell me that even Saddam dropped his sorry butt.
Fine. We'll just hand him over to the Kuwaitis or Iranians and let them deal with him.
How would you he like dem apples, Saddam?
Really? I didn't realize Saddam was such a devotee of ex post facto prohibitions. Did the people he had shot when he came to power enjoy immunity?
Unfortunately for Saddam, Johnny Cochran has shed this mortal coil.
To pump him for intel.
Get out the candels moveon.org Saddam Hussein is not OJ Simpson and Iraq doesn't have a branch of the ACLU.
It would have simplified things. Yes.
But the end is not in question. Just the theatre.
This simply isn't going to fly. If Hitler had been captured at the end of WW2 he would not have been given immunity as the head of Nazi Germany...and Saddam will not get away with his crimes.
The problem with arguing sovereign immunity is that Saddam in fact usurped the sovereign power, by taking control of the government through assassinations. Saddam had no legitimate right to rule Iraq.
I think he could be found innocent if he wears a cape to the trial.
I mean, how can you convict a guy wearing a cape???
"These people were tried and found guilty and sentenced to death according to the Iraqi criminal code," he told the BBC.
And trhe Nazis made it criminal to be a Jew.
james Brown served time in prison.
What I want to know is what the guy who put the capes on James Brown did for a living while Brother James was in jail.
That's because he has always believed his own delusional bs.
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