Saddam airs frustrations

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein doesn't like the prison food served by his American captors. He has an aversion to being watched 24 hours a day. Something about his plight reminds him of Napoleon and of Mussolini. And he has been offered family visits but refused them, fearing that the women would cry to see how he lives now.

These were some of the thoughts of Iraq's former dictator as he bantered with fellow defendants, members of his defense team and courtroom guards Monday during recesses at his trial. Unknown to Saddam and the others, microphones in the courtroom were still live, and their voices were audible to Arabic translators working for foreign reporters in a glassed-off gallery nearby.

Monday's trial session, only the second that Saddam and seven co- defendants have faced, was adjourned after less than three hours and set to reconvene next Monday.

A former secret police officer testified Monday he did not receive orders from Saddam during the investigations that followed a 1982 assassination attempt against him in Dujail.

Wadah al-Sheik, the first prosecution witness in Saddam's trial on crimes against humanity, gave his evidence on a video recorded days before he died of lung cancer last month. His account of events surrounding the torture and execution of more than 140 men and teenage boys from Dujail appeared to do little to advance the prosecution's goal of establishing Saddam's "command responsibility" for the deaths. "I did not hear anything direct from Saddam Hussein," Sheik said.

After nearly two years in solitary confinement, Saddam seemed buoyed by the chance to talk in court Monday.

What he talked about mostly was the hum-drum of prison life.

But one passage seemed tinged with darker possibilities. That came when Saddam's chief lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, was talking to him about the merits of the prosecution and defense teams. "Mr. President, about what you suggested, I think that if we find a weak member in our team we take him off, but if there is a weak member in that team we leave him there," Dulaimi said, as recorded by a translator for The Chicago Tribune and passed to other news organizations.

In the notes distributed by The Chicago Tribune, the reference to "that team" was interpreted as meaning the prosecution. The Tribune's notes, referring to Dulaimi, said, "He made a little underhand cupping motion with his hand as he said the words 'Take him off.' "

What exactly did Dulaimi mean?

Removing a weak lawyer from the defense team was understandable enough. But by what means did the chief lawyer imagine that he or anybody on the defense team could choose to "leave" -- or not leave - - a member of the prosecution team in place?

For the rest, Saddam seemed pretty much like any other prisoner. He compared notes on conditions at the American detention centers with Awad al-Bandar, the former chief judge of the revolutionary court under Saddam. "I don't care for the food," Saddam said. "I only eat what I like." Then he added, "I walk through four iron gates to get to the area where I can take my morning walk." The walking space, he said, is "maybe 9 meters long. . . . There's an eye on me 24 hours a day."

The notes added, "Saddam said he was offered family visits but he refused, saying something about how the women could be crying if they had to endure the circumstances of visiting him."

Saddam at one point during the trial demanded the chief judge reprove the American military guards who he said manhandled him on his way to the courtroom.

"I want you to order them, not tell them," Saddam thundered, after the judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, said he would tell the Americans of the complaints. "I don't want you to tell them. Order them! They are in our country. You are an Iraqi. They are foreigners and occupiers and invaders, so you must condemn them. Otherwise, you are a small boat rocking in the waves."

Despite his feisty exchanges with the judge, Saddam seemed to be in a chastened mood.

At another point, he slipped momentarily into self- disparagement, saying, "Saddam is not a lion anymore, so don't be afraid of him."

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