Iraq: Gunmen killed a second defence lawyer acting in Saddam Hussein's trial yesterday, renewing questions over whether the former president can get a fair trial amid Iraq's daily violence.
Another defence lawyer was slightly wounded in the attack on their car in Baghdad, police and defence team sources said.
The shooting followed the murder of another defence lawyer who was shot the day after the televised start of proceedings on October 19th.
It stoked controversy about whether the high-profile trial for crimes against humanity should be delayed or moved abroad. The defence team, which had already threatened to boycott the next hearing on November 28th unless measures were taken to protect them, said a fair trial was impossible in current circumstances.
In the latest attack, Adil al-Zubeidi was killed and his colleague, Thamer Hamoud al-Khuzaie, wounded when their car came under fire in the western Baghdad district of Hay al-Adil.
Both men were on a team defending Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan.
Millions watching across the country last month saw Mr Zubeidi argue forcefully with the judge, brandishing documents and jabbing his finger as he protested the validity of evidence.
"There can be no fair trial without providing security for witnesses, judges and lawyers on an equal footing. No trial can take place in such conditions," Issam Ghazzawi, a spokesman for Saddam's Jordan-based defence team, told Reuters in Amman.
Richard Dicker, who is monitoring the trial for Human Rights Watch in New York said: "This second killing heightens the concerns that we've had all along.
"It's urgent if this trial is to go forward that effective measures are put in place to protect the defence lawyers. The Iraqi government and US advisers need to go the extra mile." The defendants are charged with ordering and overseeing the killing of more than 140 Shia Muslim men from Dujail after an attack on the presidential motorcade as it passed through the village, 60km north of Baghdad, in July 1982.
Elsewhere, bomb attacks aimed at Iraqi security forces killed at least nine people yesterday as violence continued unabated.
Four Iraqi soldiers were killed and a fifth critically wounded when a bomb blew up near their patrol car in the small town of Dali Abbas, northeast of Baghdad, police said.
Another bomb targeted a police patrol in Daquq, near Kirkuk, killing two policemen. Another policeman was killed in Baquba, north of Baghdad, and a bomb blast killed a security forces colonel and his brother in the southern city of Basra.
Meanwhile, Iraq's former defence minister will defy an arrest warrant over billion-dollar corruption charges and return to contest the December elections, his spokesman has said.
Prosecutors last month issued a total of 23 warrants for former defence minister Hazim al-Shaalan and two dozen officials for the alleged misappropriation of $1.3 billion from government coffers.
Mr Shaalan, who is in London and also spends time in Jordan, denied any wrongdoing.