Saddam may hang at Abu Ghraib

Baghdad: Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who has been sentenced to death for the massacre of nearly 150 people in 1982, may be hanged in the Abu Ghraib prison where he tortured and killed many Iraqis.

The Los Angles Times, quoting Iraqi legal expert Tarek Hareb, reports that unless the court hearing charges against Hussein builds a new execution chamber, he is likely to be executed in the Abu Ghraib complex, which has Iraq’s only gallows.

The prison became notorious worldwide in 2003 after it became known that US military personnel had tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners. Photographs taken by US personnel showed prisoners naked and chained.

Hussein was on Sunday convicted in the deaths of nearly 150 Shiite Muslims following a 1982 assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail. He and two others were sentenced to death by hanging.

As both the defence and prosecution have a month to present their cases to the appellate court and there is a 30-day time limit after the sentences are review, Saddam could be executed before springtime.

Chief prosecutor Jaafar Al Moussawi told the LA Times he estimates that the Iraqi High Tribunal's nine-judge appellate court would complete its review in about two months. He expressed confidence the jurists would uphold the verdict.

"The evidence that we offered is clear and varied and will not prolong the appeals," Al Moussawi told the newspaper.

Both Al Moussawi and Hareb said the appellate court would finish reviewing the case in no more than three months. Unlike other Iraqi appellate courts, the Iraqi High Tribunal's panel doesn't have any cases stacked up and can concentrate solely on Dujail.

A defense lawyer in Hussein’s genocide trial demanded on Wednesday that the court investigate the alleged ransacking of the defence team's office in the US-controlled Green Zone of Baghdad.

The demand was made by counsel Badee Izzat Aref as the trial resumed with Saddam and the six co-defendants present. They have been on trial since August for their roles in a crackdown against Kurdish guerrillas in the late 1980s.