BAGHDAD, 29 April 2005 — Ousted dictator Saddam Hussein marked his 68th birthday in a US-run jail yesterday unlikely to be showered with gifts — only the knowledge that Iraq has turned the page on his brutal regime with its first freely-elected government in half a century.
His Iraqi lawyer Khalil Dulaimi said Saddam — awaiting trial on charges of crimes against humanity — was enjoying “good health and high morale.”
But an Iraq Special Tribunal spokesman laughed when asked if Saddam would receive anything special for his birthday, and declined to say if would be allowed to watch television or call his family.
It is the dictator’s second birthday behind bars at a US base near Baghdad airport since his capture in December 2003 near his hometown of Tikrit.
Saddam faces a number of charges of crimes against humanity for his regime’s campaign against the Kurds and the brutal suppression of a Shiite uprising in 1991. No date has been set for his trial.
“If there is any arrangement for his birthday, I will let you know, but I think it’s not logical,” said Ayad, the tribunal spokesman, declining to give his last name for security reasons.
Iraq’s 15-million-strong Shiite majority, long oppressed under the ousted dictator, has grown frustrated over the delays in bringing Saddam to trial. Many are clamoring for him to receive the death penalty.
However, Iraq’s new president, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, said earlier this month that he opposed the idea of Saddam being sentenced to death.
Iraq’s Parliament marked the occasion by voting in a new democratically elected Cabinet, three months after millions turned out to vote in landmark elections on Jan. 30.
“If we made him an imaginary cake, Halabja should be written on one piece, another could be the drained Arab marshes in the south, another would be mass graves, another chemicals, another the invasion of Kuwait, of Iran,” said outgoing Human Rights Minister Baktiar Amin.
Amin has spearheaded efforts to gather evidence from mass graves around Iraq to be used in trials of Saddam and other former regime leaders.
Chemical weapons were used to kill hundreds of Kurds in Halabja in northern Iraq in 1988, according to rights groups who gathered evidence on the deaths.
Iraqis have found at least 290 mass graves filled with thousands of people, many still unidentified, since the fall of the former regime, Amin said.
Dulaimi, who met his client on Wednesday, described his client a in good spirits, spokesman Ziad Khassawneh said in a statement in Amman.
It was the second time the two met, Khassawneh said, adding that details of the meeting would be issued in the next few days.
