The Perils of Defending a Tyrant

By Brian Bennett/Baghdad

Baghdad provides no safe haven for the lawyer of Saddam Hussein. After two weeks of broken appointments and misinformation about his whereabouts, Khalil al-Dulaimi was finally reached by phone at his family home on the outskirts of Ramadi, a restive city west of Baghdad. There, he explained, he is protected by his tribe, the Dulaimis, the most powerful in the war-torn Anbar province. With two of his fellow defense attorneys found dead in the Iraqi capital in the past few weeks, al-Dulaimi has reason to be wary, and, he told TIME, the looming threat of being kidnapped and murdered is crippling his ability to launch an adequate defense of the fallen dictator.

Interviews with six of the more than 13 Iraqi attorneys defending Saddam and his lieutenants reveal a constant backdrop of threatened violence as they try to perform basic legal tasks like deposing witnesses, reviewing documents and preparing their clients for the trial, which resumes next week after a recess of almost five weeks. At best, the lawyers say, they face a logistical nightmare when visiting the U.S.-run prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad, where high-ranking members of the former regime are being held. At worst, they fear that every trip home from the office could end in a shower of bullets and a pool of blood.

That was how it ended for Adel al-Zubaidi on a sunny afternoon in early November. The attorney defending Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti and former Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan was heading home from work with a colleague when two Opel sedans and two orange-and-white taxis boxed in his car on the busy main street of his neighborhood. Two men wearing jeans got out firing Russian-made PKC heavy machine guns, riddling the red Proton sedan with bullets, says al-Zubaidi's son-in-law, who arrived on the scene 10 minutes after the shooting and spoke with eyewitnesses. The son-in-law, Riyadh al-Janabi, says that moments before the murder, all five cars had passed unhindered through an Iraqi police checkpoint.

The day before his assassination, with only an unarmed guard to watch over him, al-Zubaidi, 61, sat in the cafeteria of the Iraqi Bar Association and told TIME that he believed the Badr Corps, the military wing of Iraq's largest Shi'ite political party, was out to get him and his fellow attorneys--and using the police to do it. Al-Zubaidi said he had been told by reliable witnesses that Ministry of Interior vehicles were used in the kidnap and execution of his fellow defense attorney Saadoun al-Janabi on Oct. 20. The Iraqi government and the Badr Corps both deny any involvement in the kidnapping. But al-Zubaidi cited his suspicions as the reason he refused an offer by the Iraqi government to move to a house inside the secured Green Zone. "Tell me, who is in the Green Zone?" he asked. "The leaders of the militia!"

Preparing for court is an exercise in vigilance and anxiety. Meeting with clients requires navigating a complicated process of permissions, searches and U.S.-imposed time restrictions with defendants. Al-Zubaidi and a colleague of his who survived the shooting, Thamer al-Khuzaie, described in detail a Nov. 6 visit to consult with a client at U.S-administered Camp Cropper. They met Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, head of Iraqi intelligence in the 1980s, in a trailer. Inexplicably, he appeared with a scarf wrapped around his head so that they could see only his eyes. They say they were not allowed to see his face and were told not to hand him any papers. A U.S. soldier sat at the table with the lawyers during the duration of their visit. The two men had just two hours to prepare their client to answer questions he might be asked by the judge. "For reasons of security," TIME's request to visit the facility to confirm the account of the lawyers was refused by Task Force 134, which runs the prison, and by the U.S.-led Regime Crimes Liaison Office, which coordinates visits by defense lawyers.

Al-Dulaimi says the details of his more than 10 visits with Saddam in Camp Cropper are too humiliating to discuss, for both himself and his client. Al-Dulaimi says he had always been opposed to Saddam when the dictator was in power, but he so resented watching a foreign power invade his country that he decided to defend Saddam in court. Al-Dulaimi intends to prove that the tribunal is illegal because it was set up under occupation. As for the charge that Saddam ordered widespread torture and killing in Dujail in 1982, the lawyer will argue that Saddam was acting legally as a leader of a sovereign country to protect himself from assassination. Says al-Dulaimi: "Iraqis are resisting the invasion. Some of them choose armed resistance. I chose peaceful resistance by defending the President." Now, however, the defender needs defending too.