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Saddam blasts ‘Iranian meddling’ in Iraq

AMMAN — Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein blasted “Iranian meddling” in Iraq during a five-hour jailhouse meeting with his lawyers, one of his defense attorneys said in statements published yesterday.

“President Saddam complained of being cut off from world news and told us “I don’t know what is happening on the outside’,” the head of Jordan’s Bar Association, Saleh Al Armuti, told the Al Arab Al Yawm newspaper.

“We briefed him on major Iraqi, Arab and international affairs, led by the (Iraqi) resistance, the pressure on Syria and the Iranian nuclear crisis” during the Sunday meeting, Armuti said.

Saddam, who is being held in a US-controlled prison in the Iraqi capital, then expressed his displeasure over “Iranian meddling in Iraqi affairs”.

“The Iranian danger continues to pressure Arab and Muslim nations because the Iranians have a long history of rancor, the worst in the world. How did the Arabs allow Iran to take part in Iraq’s occupation?” Saddam said to the lawyers.

He also described international pressure on Baathist-ruled Syria as “natural ... because of the nationalistic positions of President (Bashar) Al Assad,” Armuti said.

Saddam’s trial resumes today in the Iraqi capital. He and seven co-defendants face death by hanging if convicted of mass killings of Shia residents from the town of Dujail, where Saddam escaped a plot to kill him in 1982.

The Jordanian barrister said Saddam was in “high spirits” and revealed that Saddam had finished writing a new book in December. “He showed it to me. It is in three parts: poetry, short stories and literary texts,” Armuti said. Saddam told the lawyers that he spends his time reading the Holy Quran and writing and that he “has no spare time”, he added.

Armuti is among three Arab lawyers who have joined Saddam’s defence team ahead of his trial. The other two are Issa Bou Rashid of Bahrain and Taysseer Al Mudather of Sudan.