Saddam's trial takes twists and turns

Five more service members lost their lives.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The trial of Saddam Hussein took startling turns Thursday when prosecutors said the first witness would be a bedridden cancer patient who helped run Iraq's feared intelligence agency. In the first setback, a lawyer for one of the dictator's co-defendants was kidnapped.
Iraq's premier, meanwhile, said he was proud the court gave Saddam -- whom he called "one of the world's most hardened criminals" -- so much freedom to talk at Wednesday's opening session. A defiant Saddam refused to answer the chief judge's questions and said he did not recognize the legitimacy of the proceedings because he was still president.
Also Thursday, the U.S. military announced the deaths of five service members, including three killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb near Balad, north of Baghdad, and another by a suicide car bomb near the Syrian border. A fifth soldier died from a nonhostile gunshot, the military said.
Lengthy process
The prosecution of Saddam and seven of his regime's henchmen in a mass-murder case could be a lengthy process. It is the first of up to a dozen that prosecutors plan to bring to trial against Saddam and his Baath Party inner circle for atrocities during their 23-year rule.
Wednesday's opening session saw the 68-year-old former president proclaim his innocence to charges of murder, torture, forced expulsion and illegal imprisonment stemming from a 1982 massacre of 148 Shiites in Dujail, a mainly Shiite town north of Baghdad, after a failed attempt on Saddam's life.
Wadah Ismail al-Sheik, director of the investigation department at Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence agency at the time of the Dujail massacre, will give his testimony in a hospital Sunday, court officials said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. They declined to say which hospital.
Prosecutors said al-Sheik played an important role in the events at Dujail. If he recovers, they said, he may be a defendant in a separate, related case. The officials did not give details on the other case and did not specify al-Sheik's age.
In another trial development, 10 masked gunmen kidnapped the lawyer for one of Saddam's co-defendants, police said. Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi, who was in the courtroom Wednesday, is one of two lawyers representing Awad Hamed al-Bandar, one of the seven Baath Party officials also being tried.
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