Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer said Sunday the defense team will continue boycotting his Kurdish genocide trial to protest the ousting of the trial's first chief judge and the court's refusal to allow defense attorneys to examine thousands of documents. Lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said the decision was made after he met with the deposed Iraqi leader Oct. 2 and because of «repeated violations by the court.» The ousted president and six others have been on trial since Aug. 21 for the Operation Anfal crackdown on Kurdish rebels in the late 1980s. The prosecution says about 180,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed, the Associated Press reported. The trial, Saddam's second, is scheduled to resume Monday in Baghdad after a 12-day break. The chief judge adjourned the hearing to allow the defendants time to persuade their lawyers to return to the courtroom, find new counsel or accept court-appointed attorneys. In a sudden move last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki approved a request by the Iraqi High Tribunal, the country's supreme court, to remove the trial's chief Judge Abdullah al-Amiri after he angered Kurds by saying that Saddam was «not a dictator.» He was replaced by Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, who presided over turbulent hearings in which he repeatedly threw Saddam out of court. Al-Dulaimi cited last month's abrupt replacement of al-Amiri as the primary reason for their boycott, which began Sept. 24. «Other reasons include depriving the defendants of their right to have non-Iraqi lawyers be present in the courtroom and because the court ignored a defense request for a break to study 10,000 documents presented by the prosecution,» said al-Dulaimi, an Iraqi lawyer who leads a nine-member defense team.
