Gunmen Kill Lawyer for Saddam Co-Defendant

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

Gunmen in Baghdad today opened fire on a car carrying two lawyers representing Saddam Hussein's co-defendants. They killed one and wounded the other. This is the second attack on the defense team. Last month another lawyer was kidnapped from his office and found dead hours later. NPR's Peter Kenyon is following this story and joins me on the line from Baghdad.

And, Peter, what more can you tell us about the attacks?

PETER KENYON reporting:

Well, Iraqi officials quoting police on the scene say that a dark red car was found shot up with the two attorneys. The dead lawyer is identified as Adil Al Zubeidi; he's an attorney for Saddam's brother and Iraq's former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. The other attorney who was wounded and evacuated for medical treatment is Thamer Hamoud Al Khuzaie.

Now as you mentioned, this isn't the first attack on attorneys. Saadun al-Janabi, another member of the defense team, was kidnapped from his office last month the day after the trial began. His body was found hours later dumped on the road, two bullets to the head. Now that prompted calls for greater security. There is an official with Iraq's Interior Ministry who says today that eyewitnesses on the scene of today's shooting said these two lawyers were driving in a private car with no evidence of body guards or other security in sight.

MONTAGNE: Is there anything at this point known about who's behind these attacks on Saddam's defense team?

KENYON: Nothing solid. An abundance of rumors, as you might imagine here. No one has been identified as being among the attackers or planning it. Of the two main theories floating around, one suggests hard-line Sunnis, some of the same people who kill Iraqis who cooperate with the government or Americans are behind it. The second theory propounded widely in certain parts of the press and other areas holds that government forces perhaps aligned--Shiite forces certainly--perhaps aligned with the government who are too impatient to wait for a trial are behind some of these killings. There's some unconfirmed eyewitness reports from last month's attack on Mr. al-Janabi that people appear to be from the Ministry of Interior involved with it. That's strongly denied by the government, of course, but so far no one's been arrested in either case.

MONTAGNE: And what has the Iraqi government done to increase security for those involved in Saddam's trial?

KENYON: Well, the officials we've spoken with since the shooting today say the Iraqi government did offer full protection for all attorneys in the case, but some--and what we don't know is if these two were among these rejected additional protection--they said they were concerned--some of these attorneys said they were concerned about rumors in the press that we were just discussing, that the Ministry of Interior was operating killing squads. American officials won't say what security offers they may have made. They say that's--for security reasons, they just won't talk about it. One of the spokesmen, I should say, for the attorneys in Amman, Jordan, today said after the shooting there can be no fair trial without providing security for witnesses, judges and lawyers on an equal footing.

MONTAGNE: And that trial is expected to resume later this month. What about demands that it be moved outside the country?

KENYON: Well, obviously there's ample reason to make that move on security grounds, and there's also grounds that it's hard for this former dictator to get a trial here--a fair trial, I should say. On the other hand, there's a lot of pressure to keep the trial in Baghdad. This new government wants to show the world that Iraq's turned a corner and that no one's above the law and that they can put Saddam Hussein on trial fairly. And let's also say the Bush administration prefers having this trial here as a reminder of something that went right with the Iraq project, the capture and trial of a brutal dictator.

MONTAGNE: Peter, thanks very much. NPR's Peter Kenyon, speaking from Baghdad.

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