Saddam's outbursts lead Specter to say judges should take control

He said he' disappointed with the way Saddam has been allowed to dominate.
Combined dispatches
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's judges should take control of his chaotic trial, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said here Tuesday, either by holding him in contempt for his repeated disruptions of the proceedings or banishing him from the courtroom.
Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that American officials in Baghdad had told him they expect Saddam to face a half-dozen separate trials. That would raise the prospect of months or years of proceedings unless conviction, condemnation and hanging for any one case stop the clock on trials to follow.
Specter spoke to reporters in the courtroom where Saddam and seven co-defendants are being tried on charges related to the torture and killings of more than 140 residents of the southern town of Dujail after an assassination attempt against Saddam there in 1982.
While gathering vivid accounts from weeping witnesses of retribution for the attack, the trial's sessions have often been dominated by the outbursts of Saddam and his former aides. At one point he told judges, "Go to hell." His half brother and co-defendant has spit at officials and told witnesses to die, and all eight defendants walked out of court one day.
Specter's evaluation
"I have been disappointed the way the court has permitted Saddam to dominate the proceedings, and I respect Iraqi sovereignty, and I respect judicial independence, but it's also a fair comment to evaluate what is going on," Specter said before a meeting with the trial judges.
"The evidence is there to portray to the world exactly what has happened here," Specter said. "You have a butcher who has butchered his own people, a torturer who has tortured his own people. ... And that evidence ought to be presented in a systematic way."
Specter said that U.S. and international law have precedents for holding disruptive defendants in contempt and trying them without their being present in the courtroom. "Those are subjects I intend to take up with the Iraqis," he said.
Kevin Dooley, a U.S. Embassy liaison to the Iraqi High Tribunal trying Saddam, said it was likely that charges for other cases would be filed against Saddam, but he declined to comment on the number or length of the prospective trials.
In an interview last week with the Arabic language, London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, tribunal investigating judge Raid Juhi said investigators were ready to present cases against Saddam in the 1988 gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja and a campaign that killed more than 100,000 Kurds and leveled Kurdish villages.
Beyond courtroom
In other developments:
U The U.S. coalition in Iraq saw its size dwindle Tuesday as Ukraine and Bulgaria said all their troops had left the country. Poland said it would remain but reduce its number of troops by 600 next year.
U The Shiite religious bloc leading Iraq's parliamentary elections held talks Tuesday with Kurdish leaders about who should get the top 12 government jobs, as thousands of Sunni Arabs and secular Shiites protested what they say was a tainted vote.
U Workers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala uncovered remains believed to be part of a mass grave dating to a 1991 uprising against Saddam.