“We strongly condemn this act and we condemn the killings done by the Interior Ministry forces against Iraqis,” he said, adding that US-led forces also bore responsibility because the war had allowed Shiite militias to gain influence. Sunni Arabs were dominant under Saddam’s rule but lost power to majority Shiites after his ouster in April 2003.

A dozen masked gunmen abducted defense lawyer Saadoun al-Janabi from his Baghdad office the day after the trial’s opening session in October. His body was found the next day with two bullets in his head. Nearly three weeks later, defense lawyer Adel al-Zubeidi was assassinated in a brazen daylight ambush in Baghdad. A colleague who was wounded fled the country.

The defense has asked Iraqi authorities for increased protection and threatened to boycott the trial unless this was provided.

The deposed leader and the other seven are charged with killing more than 140 Shiites in the town of Dujail in 1982.

<B>Bodies of two missing GIs recovered in Iraq</B>

The US military recovered the bodies of the two missing soldiers from an area it said was rigged with explosives. An Iraqi official said the Americans were tortured and killed in a “barbaric”way yesterday, a parked car bombing struck a Shiite slum in Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding three, police said. The explosion occurred near an ice cream shop in Sadr City, a sprawling district in eastern Baghdad, police Captain Sattar Jabar. It was the second such blast in as many days in the neighborhood. A parked minivan packed with explosives also exploded at a busy outdoor market there, killing seven people and wounding 22. Meanwhile, an insurgent group claimed the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq executed the men personally, but it offered no evidence. The US military did not confirm whether the soldiers died from wounds suffered in an attack Friday or were kidnapped and later killed.The discovery of the bodies dealt a new setback to US efforts to seize the momentum against al-Qaida in Iraq after killing its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a June 7 airstrike. Coalition forces spotted the American soldiers’ bodies, three days after the men disappeared following an attack on their checkpoint south of the capital, the military said. Casualties had placed IEDs around the bodies.” Some 8,000 Iraqi and US troops searched for the missing soldiers. One U.S. soldier died and 12 were wounded during the search, Caldwell said, adding that coalition troops killed two insurgents and detained 78. The troops received 66 tips, 18 of which were considered worthy of follow up.