Saddam lawyer killed in Baghdad

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Baghdad June 21, 2006: A lawyer for ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was found dead on Wednesday after being kidnapped from his Baghdad home, the third member of the defense team to be slain.

Khamis Al Obeidi was snatched from his home in the predominantly Sunni Arab district of Adhamiyha at about 7:00 am (0300 GMT) by men dressed in Iraqi security force uniforms and his body was found a few hours later dumped at a nearby roundabout.

The killing underscored the continuing lawlessness engulfing Baghdad despite a massive security clampdown in the capital launched a week ago involving nearly 60,000 Iraqi and US troops.

"The police found the corpse of Obeidi tossed in a roundabout in the Ur neighborhood," an interior ministry official said, referring to a district of the capital between predominantly Sunni Adhamiyah and the Shia area of Sadr City.

"I heard from his [Obeidi's] family that a group of men dressed in the uniform of interior ministry security forces took him away at 7:00 am today," Saddam's lead Iraqi lawyer Khalil Al Dulaimi said by telephone from Amman.

Obeidi, a 54-year-old Sunni Arab hailing from the powerful Obeidi tribe, is the third defense lawyer for Saddam and his seven co-defendants to be killed since their trial for crimes against humanity over the killing of Shia villagers opened in October.

A US official close to the court said that Obeidi had declined an offer to stay inside the fortress-like Green Zone, seat of the Iraqi government and home to the US diplomatic and military corps, where the trial is taking place.

The official said that it was his understanding that Obeidi, like other lawyers, had received a budget from the interior ministry to arrange for his own protection.

"It is a criminal act to weaken the defense at a time when it was preparing its final arguments. But we will continue our work," Dulaimi said.

In his closing arguments on Monday, the chief prosecutor demanded the death penalty for Saddam, his half brother Barzan Al Tikriti and former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan for their alleged role in killing 148 villagers in Dujail in following an assassination attempt against Saddam in 1982.

The defense team is scheduled to present its closing arguments on July 10 and a verdict is expected in mid-September.

Despite the massive security operation in Baghdad launched on June 21, at least 70 people have been killed in a spate of bombings and attacks including strikes against a mosque and busy clothing markets.

In the latest attack, two people were killed and four wounded in a bombing outside a busy restaurant in Sadr City, according to an interior ministry official.

Another seven people were killed by gunmen in a string of attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday in and around the restive city of Baquba northeast of Baghdad where insurgent attacks have surged in Baquba in the past few months.

In Baghdad police found the bodies of a man and a woman.

Meanwhile, the commander of US forces in Iraq, General George Casey, was scheduled to hold talks with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Washington and was expected to review the prospects for a US troop reduction.

The talks come after the bodies of two US soldiers were found south of Baghdad following their abduction by insurgents on Friday.

A spokesman for US-led forces, Major General William Caldwell, announced that coalition forces had recovered on Tuesday "what we believe are the remains of our soldiers, who disappeared in the vicinity of Yusifiyah."

He said that the bodies of Kristian Menchaca, 23, and Thomas Tucker, 25, were being flown home for an autopsy and formal identification.

Caldwell refused to confirm that they had been brutally tortured and "viciously killed" as indicated by an Iraqi army general.

An Al Qaeda in Iraq-led coalition claimed responsibility for the soldiers' killing in an Internet statement following several warnings by the group to avenge the death of its former leader Jordanian-born Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi in a US airstrike on June 7.

A US soldier was killed when his comrades were abducted and another died in the 8,000-strong hunt for the missing soldiers, the military said.

"It is a reminder that this is a brutal enemy that does not follow any of the rules," White House national security advisor Stephen Hadley said.

The mounting US casualties, which have surpassed 2,500 since the US-led invasion in 2003, come amid a heated debate between President George W. Bush's Republican party and Democrats in Congress, who have demanded a timetable for a drawdown of the some 130,000 US troops in the country.