Baath-hunters want 20 staff out of Saddam trial

newkerala/reuters: BAGHDAD, Jan 20 : Twenty staff on the court trying Saddam Hussein should be barred as members of his Baath party, the Iraqi panel hunting out former Baathists said today.

A tribunal official warned such accusations, already made against the new chief judge, could delay next week's hearings.

The new crisis hits the trial a week after the chief judge who chaired the first hearings against the former president resigned, complaining of government interference.

The independent Debaathification Commission, charged with rooting out former members of Saddam's Baath party, said on Wednesday that substitute chief judge Sayeed al-Hamashi was the subject of an inquiry and should be removed from his post.

''Our position on Hamashi is definitive and final. We sent the court a notification on Wednesday and that's it,'' said Ali Faisal, executive manager of the commission.

''We are not stopping with Hamashi. There are 19 others who have to be banished from the court for being former Baathists.'' But prosecutors and other court officials warned the row could delay the eighth day of hearings, due on Tuesday.

''I think the next session will be postponed,'' said Mumkidh al-Fatlawi, a prosecutor. ''If they don't solve the problem quickly before the session is due it will be postponed.'' The trial was rocked last week by the resignation of chief judge Rizgar Amin, a Kurd, who quit in protest at political interference in the U S-sponsored tribunal. After it began in October, two defence lawyers were killed.

International human rights groups have urged the trial to be moved abroad, away from the conflict pitting Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs against Shi'ites and Kurds he once oppressed. Link