Saddam Trial Becoming Like a TV Sitcom

Saddam Trial: a Somber Legal Process Turned Into Captivating TV Sitcom

By HAMZA HENDAWI

BAGHDAD, Iraq Feb 16, 2006 (AP)— It's supposed to be a serious affair, but after three months and 12 hearings, the Saddam Hussein trial has become like a TV sitcom steeped in Iraqi pop culture and local vernacular.

Interest in the trial has spiked since a new tough chief judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, took over last month and cracked down on the chaos that had marked the early hearings, which began Oct. 19.
Saddam and Barzan Ibrahim, his half brother and co-defendant, try their best to unsettle the stern new judge, using tactics from insulting his nonexistent mustache to showing up in long underwear.

Proceedings are broadcast on state television with a 20-minute delay. Many Iraqis who cannot follow the hearings during business hours watch in the evenings on satellite stations, some of which show the day's full hearing.

Perceptions of the trial among Iraqis depend in large part on their sectarian affiliations.

Many Shiites, long oppressed by Saddam's Sunni Arab-dominated regime, believe the ex-president's execution is already overdue. To many Sunni Arabs, Saddam and his seven co-defendants are persecuted men.

Yet, Iraqis are united over one thing the trial's entertainment value.

"The toughness of the new judge has turned the whole thing into a farce," said Ismail Ibrahim, a 45-year-old Sunni engineer who watches the hearings at work. "It's funny."

Hatem Abbas Khalaf, a health worker from the holy Shiite city of Karbala, said he finds the whole affair "entertaining."

"It makes me gloat over the predicament of Saddam and his associates," he said.

Saddam's daughter even chipped in with her own critique of what goes on in the courtroom.

"This judge Raouf is the strangest cartoon character I have ever seen in my life," Raghad Saddam Hussein has told Al Arabiya television Tuesday from Amman, Jordan.

Over two sessions Monday and Tuesday, Saddam and Ibrahim dominated the proceedings with some vintage courtroom theatrics. But in a series of instances, they appeared to break new ground.

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