Hussein Verdict Near After Trial With 'Serious Shortcomings'

Testimony from more than 80 Iraqis laid out the case over 40 court sessions: On July 8, 1982, while Iraq was locked in a war with both Iran and Shiite rebels allied with Iran, attackers armed with automatic weapons opened fire as Hussein's motorcade toured Dujail. "Bullets were in front of me and here and there," Hussein testified. "It was God who wanted to save me."

The retribution all but wiped out Dujail. Of 148 townspeople charged, all signed confessions -- allegedly under torture -- and were condemned. Mistreatment killed 46 of them before they could be executed. Ten of the 148 were boys ages 11 to 17. The government held them in prison until they turned 18, then hanged them.

Hundreds more townspeople were forced to a remote desert camp, where many men, women and children died. Bulldozers razed Dujail's orchards.

When the Americans led the invasion of Iraq in 2003, they made a priority of prosecuting Hussein, both for the Dujail incident and in larger cases involving alleged campaigns of genocide against the Shiites of southern Iraq and the Kurds of the north. The trial of Hussein and others in connection with the so-called Anfal campaign aimed at exterminating the Kurds in 1988 is currently in progress.

The U.S. government spent $128 million in funds earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction just on exhuming five mass graves, and poured millions more in U.S. funds into renovating the courthouse in Baghdad's Green Zone, training Iraqi court officials and conducting and guarding the proceedings. Preparations included repeat viewings of "Judgment at Nuremberg," a 1961 Hollywood film, Western officials said.

American advisers to the Dujail trial say it was the yellowing files of Hussein's bureaucracy -- execution orders allegedly signed by Hussein, reports held together with straight pins or bound with shoelaces by the officials who prepared them -- that provided much of the evidence linking the defendants with the retaliation in the town. Hussein's own courtroom statements could be equally damning, according to Scharf and the U.S. officials in Baghdad.

"Where is the crime?" Hussein demanded at one point, speaking of his government's confiscation of the orchards.

"I signed that decision," he continued, "and nobody forced me to sign that decision."

"I am Saddam Hussein, and at the time of leadership, I am responsible," he said. Lapsing into the presidential third person, he added, "It is not his habit to rely on others."

What many saw as courtroom antics distracted from the testimony and drew international criticism. Co-defendants frequently stood up in court to declare, "Long live Saddam Hussein!" Hussein repeatedly cursed the tribunal's three judges, the U.S. occupation and U.S. leaders, ordering Bush "to hell with his father."

A co-defendant, Barzan Ibrahim, Hussein's half brother and former security chief, at times attended court in his underwear, turning his back to judges to show his contempt. Tariq Aziz, a witness and once Hussein's top envoy, testified in his pajamas. Hussein staged hunger strikes. He and his fellow accused frequently walked out on or boycotted the proceedings.

At other times, especially as the trial wore on, Hussein could be decorous and easily the most charismatic figure in the courtroom. He bested his prosecutors in pointed exchanges and sometimes expressed sympathy for weeping witnesses, his copy of the Koran always at hand.