Iraqi Tribunal Details Plan to Prosecute Saddam Hussein

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 5 -The Iraqi court set up to hear cases against Saddam Hussein and his top aides plans to bring him to trial by late summer or early fall in its first case, involving the 1982 killings of nearly 160 men from Dujail, a predominantly Shiite village north of Baghdad, after he survived an assassination attempt there, according to a senior Iraqi court official.

By scheduling an early trial for Mr. Hussein on a small fraction of the accusations against him, the Iraqi Special Tribunal has effectively ceded to pressure from Iraq's transitional government, settling a behind-the-scenes power struggle involving American lawyers who have guided the tribunal's work since the court was established last year. The Americans favored trying at least some of Mr. Hussein's aides first, saying doing so would help build up a pattern of 'command responsibility' that led conclusively to Mr. Hussein.

This approach, the American lawyers have said, would allow prosecutors to use his aides' testimony against him, bolstering documents that were often inconclusive on Mr. Hussein's personal role in the mass killings. But this approach would most likely have delayed Mr. Hussein's trial until some time in 2006, because the tribunal, using two side-by-side courtrooms, each with a five-judge panel sitting without a jury, would first have to work its way through trials of at least some of his subordinates."