Amman: Around 1,100 Iraqi lawyers have withdrawn from Saddam Hussein's defence team, citing insufficient protection following the slaying of two of their peers who had defended co-defendants of the ousted Iraqi leader.
The lawyers did not say if Saddam's chief Iraqi attorney Khalil alDulaimi was among those who withdrew.
However, the statement of the lawyers said that other members of the team in Baghdad were continuing their duties ?under complex and dangerous circumstances.?
Support lawyers for Saddam's team in Jordan were not immediately available for comment.
The 1,100 lawyers repeated their call for canceling the trial in Iraq, which opened on October 19.
The lawyers said that they pulled out because there was no response from the Iraqi government, US forces and international organisations to the demands for providing protection to the lawyers and their families.
Two Iraqi lawyers defending Saddam's colleagues have been killed since the start of the trial.
Adel al-Zubeidi, lawyer for former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, died last Tuesday when bullets were sprayed into his car in a largely Sunni Arab neighbourhood of western Baghdad.
The shots also wounded Thamir al-Khuzaie, attorney for another co-defendant, Saddam's half brother Barazan Ibrahim.
Al-Zubeidi was gunned down three weeks after the kidnap slaying of Saadoun al-Janabi, another defence lawyer in the Saddam trial.
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