Baghdad, Iraq – The court trying Saddam Hussein abruptly called off Tuesday’s session, asserting that some witnesses and complainants were away on hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca and did not show up.
Tribunal spokesman Raed Juhi announced the delay after a four- hour wait for Tuesday’s scheduled session to start. The court will reconvene Sunday, Juhi said.
He refused to say who the missing witnesses and complainants were or why the court waited past midday to delay the hearing. The trial has been plagued by months of delays and postponements.
A new judge has been designated to lead the tribunal overseeing the trial of Hussein, an Iraqi judicial official said Monday.
Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman will temporarily replace outgoing chief judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, according to the chief investigator in the case, The Associated Press reported.
Amin submitted a letter of resignation earlier this month after receiving criticism for his handling of the case, in which he had allowed disruptive outbursts by Hussein and his co-defendants.
On Sunday, a Western diplomat told reporters that Iraqi judicial officials were trying to talk Amin out of quitting and that his resignation had not been formally accepted.
Abdel-Rahman, who like Amin is a member of the Iraqi Kurd minority, was transferred from a tribunal handling other cases against Hussein and senior members of his government.
Amin’s departure was the latest in a series of troubles for the Hussein trial, during which another judge had resigned and two defense attorneys were assassinated. The diplomat said the trial, focusing on the killing of at least 140 people in the town of Dujayl after an assassination attempt against Hussein in 1982, would end by May at the earliest. The trial was to have resumed Tuesday after a month-long recess.
Miranda Sissons, an international humanitarian-law specialist with the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York, said that Abdel-Rahman was not well-known. She added that the changes on the bench and the threats to the security of trial personnel were raising concerns among legal experts.
“Trials have to have a sense of consistency and security in order to have integrity,” Sissons said.
