"I've got soldiers dying about every day," he said. "I picked a dead body out of a vehicle no more than a week ago. I hope he gets what he has coming to him."
In the courtroom, the soldiers looked at Salim only once, when the judge asked them to identify him as the owner of the house where the materials were found.
After the soldiers testified, a plainclothes guard and an Iraqi police officer removed Salim from the defendant's cage to stand in front of the judges. Etched into the pink marble behind them were a scale of justice and a verse from the Koran that read, "When you judge between a man and a man, you judge with justice."
Salim told the judge that the circuit boards came from a battery factory where he had worked and that he was only holding them for safekeeping after the factory was looted.
"Aren't you against the Army?" the judge asked. "Aren't you against the Iraqi police?"
"No," Salim responded. "No."
Later, Salim asked to speak with the judge. Gesturing from inside the cage, Salim said he was a victim of a conspiracy. The informant who had tipped off the Army was an old nemesis, he said, and the materials in the house were used for fishing. "I shock the fish and take them," he said. "But the timer, I don't use it at all."
After a 10-minute recess to discuss the case with the other judges, Thabit announced that he was ready to rule.
"The instruments they found in your house can be used for bombs," Thabit said, his head turned to address Salim in the cage. "But we didn't have any connection between a bomb in your neighborhood and the devices in your house."
Thabit ordered Salim to spend 18 months in jail.
Mukdad Alwan, Salim's attorney, protested that the court had no right to bring charges against his client in the first place. "This court is not legitimate," he said in an interview after the verdict.
Alwan said no Iraqi law prohibits the possession of the materials that the soldiers claimed to have found in Salim's house. "The Iraqi law found my client not guilty, but the court didn't say that. They tried him according to occupation forces."
Although the court is open to the public, not many Iraqis know that it exists. Americans as well as Iraqis have expressed surprise and disappointment at how light the judges have gone on security detainees like Salim.
Bashar, a 25-year-old pharmacist who was kneeling on a prayer rug behind the desk in his shop, said the violence will stop only if the detainees are imprisoned longer.
"We have many bad people in my country. Unfortunately, we need a thousand people like Saddam to control them," said Bashar, who declined to give his last name. "The court is legal, but the judge is not fair. He should put him in the jail a long time."
The only one who seemed pleased by the outcome was Salim.
After his trial, he greeted his attorney outside the courtroom with a kiss on each cheek.
Well, Alwan told his client, it could have been worse. The guy the other day got 30 years.
Salim smiled broadly.
"I'll take it easy," he said, before gesturing with his thumb at the U.S. soldiers. "Those dogs are finished."
Special correspondents Omar Fekeiki and Luma Mousawi contributed to this report.
