IRAQ: Iraq's government said yesterday it had sacked the chief judge trying Saddam Hussein on genocide charges, saying he had abandoned his neutrality by stating the ousted leader was not a dictator.
Officials at the US-backed court could not be reached for comment, but a source close to the tribunal confirmed Abdullah al-Amiri's sacking.
He said another member of the five-judge panel would take the chief judge's place tomorrow.
The decision by the Shia prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, will likely fuel criticism by some international legal rights groups, which have said government pressure and sectarian violence in Iraq make a fair trial against Saddam impossible.
"We have asked the court to replace the judge because he has lost his neutrality after he made comments saying Saddam is not a dictator," said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.
"The court told us he has already been replaced. This was a decision by the cabinet of the prime minister," he said.
The court is trying Saddam, his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed (known as "Chemical Ali") and five others for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their role in the 1988 Anfal campaign against ethnic Kurds. Saddam and al-Majeed also face the graver charge of genocide. All could be hanged if convicted.
The court was set up by US forces to try the leader ousted in 2003. Its first two cases have centred on crimes against Shia Muslims and ethnic Kurds oppressed under Saddam's Sunni Muslim-dominated administration.
The court was empowered after US-backed elections and, although Iraqis now run the court, Americans remain as advisors.
A judge in an earlier Saddam trial on charges of killing 148 Shias in the 1980s stepped down this year, citing political pressure from the government.
In a stunning exchange with Saddam last Thursday, Mr al-Amiri said he did not think the ousted leader was a "dictator".
"If I'm a dictator, why did you come to see me?" Saddam asked a Kurdish witness who testified he secured a presidential audience in 1988 to plead for his familys lives. Mr al-Amiri then addressed Saddam saying: "You are not a dictator. It is the people who surround a man who make him a dictator."
At a hearing on Monday, Saddam's cousin al-Majeed rose to object when another witness referred to Saddam as a dictator, saying the judge had already ruled he wasn't.
Mr al-Amiri, who has made no other public comments on the remarks, interrupted al-Majeed and said: "This has been misinterpreted."
A car bomb followed by a suicide blast killed 18 people and wounded 11 in a town near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday, a police source said.
The source in Shergat said a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest shortly after a crowd had gathered around the remains of a car bomb that went off near a passing Iraqi army and police patrol.
Additional reporting by Peter Graff and Ahmad Rasheed