Saddam Hussein was brought to a special Iraqi court to face charges of crimes against humanity yesterday, after arriving at the courthouse handcuffed and chained, reporters at the hearing said. They said Saddam refused to sign legal documents presented to him at the hearing and branded the proceedings “theatre”, saying the real criminal was US President George W. Bush.

Saddam also refused to concede that he had invaded Kuwait in 1990. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, one of a handful of pool journalists allowed into the courtroom, said that Saddam looked “alternately downcast and combative”.

“It is under way,” a US military official said. Reporters at the courtroom said Saddam, dressed in civilian clothes, with a trimmed bear, had arrived in an armoured bus, escorted by four US Humvee military vehicles and a military ambulance. He was taken into the building by two Iraqi prison guards, while six others waited outside.

Charges against the deposed dictator and 11 of his top lieutenants are expected to include war crimes and genocide, as well as crimes against humanity, but it is not yet clear what offences each individual will be charged with. “The judge has prepared a separate charge sheet for each one of them,” Salem Chalabi, a US-trained lawyer who has led the work of the special tribunal, told Reuters.

The proceedings were televised but not broadcast live. They were taking place near Baghdad international airport, where the US military is thought to have held the 12 men at a detention centre in solitary confinement. Saddam had no lawyers to represent him at the arraignment. Formal indictments may not be ready for months.

Similar proceedings were to be held later for his former aides, including former Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and Hassan Ali al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali” for his alleged role in using poison gas against Kurds and Iranians.

<B>Death penalth? </B>

The US military, which had held Saddam and his lieutenants as prisoners of war, handed them over to Iraqi legal custody on Wednesday, but will continue to guard them.

Saddam, accused of ordering the killing and torture of thousands of people during 35 years of Baathist rule, was captured by US forces in December near his hometown of Tikrit after eight months on the run following his April 9 overthrow.

The public last glimpsed him, dishevelled and with a bushy beard, in television footage shot soon after his capture.

Chalabi said Saddam appeared tidy, with no beard, when he was brought before an Iraqi judge on Wednesday to be told he was in Iraqi legal custody and would be charged the next day.

Saddam will be charged with crimes against humanity for a 1988 gas massacre of Kurds, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Chalabi has said previously.

Kuwait has called for Saddam to be sentenced to death over Baghdad’s seven-month occupation of the Gulf state in 1990-91. Many Iraqis want Saddam to be executed, though some say they would prefer him to suffer a more protracted punishment. “There must be a way to really make him suffer,” said Kati Hamadi, a mother of three who lost her husband and brother under Saddam’s rule in the 1980s and 1990s. “Having an Iraqi trial is an excellent idea. It will expose his murderous past and let Iraqis know all the things he has to answer for – Iraqis need to hear that,” she said.

Iraq’s interim government is considering restoring the death penalty, suspended during the US-British occupation.

The government, led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, wants to show Iraqis the occupation is really over, despite the presence of US-led foreign troops, and to prove it can curb violence.

One soldier from the multinational force was killed and two wounded on Thursday when a roadside bomb hit their convoy outside the northern city of Mosul, a US military spokesman said. He declined to give the nationalities of the victims.

A Finance Ministry official was wounded and two of his staff were killed in Baghdad when a bomb planted on a vehicle in their convoy exploded, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

On Wednesday, US forces destroyed what they said was a safe house used by a group led by Jordanian militant and al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the restive city of Falluja. The same day the United States increased to $25 million the reward offered for Zarqawi’s capture. The bounty was raised to $10 million in February from an initial $5 million in October.

The air strike, the fourth such attack on suspected Zarqawi targets in Falluja in two weeks, killed six people and wounded 15, some of them women and children, hospital sources said. There was no indication that Zarqawi, who has claimed responsibility for several suicide bombings and the beheadings of an American and a South Korean hostage, was in the building.

<B>Reactions

Nicholas Howan, Secretary-General of International Commission of Jurists, Geneva</B>

• “The justice system in Iraq is still being rebuilt (...) to ensure that justice is seen to be done, you probably need an element of international involvement. Given the enormity of his crimes, this cannot be seen to be victor’s justice. Perhaps you could have a tribunal with both international and Iraqi judges, as was done in Sierra Leone. We cannot abandon the Iraqi government. There has to be adiscussion about whether Iraq is able to provide fair justice and not just revenge.”