Saddam prosecutor on the defensive over Dujail video

BAGHDAD: The chief prosecutor in the trial of Saddam Hussein over the mass killing of Iraqi Shiite villagers was forced to defend himself in court on Wednesday against accusations he had fabricated the case.

The defence showed a video of a man said to be Jaafar al-Mussawi in the Shiite village of Dujail, where a 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam led to the arrest and execution of 148 people.

Defence witnesses charged yesterday the prosecutor had visited in 2004 to drum up testimony against Saddam by coaching witnesses and offering financial incentives--and also claimed many of the alleged victims were still alive.

"The prosecutor said they were executed but I am telling you I ate with them some time ago" and 23 of them were alive, said one witness, who was a teenager in Dujail at the time.

Mussawi, who yesterday said he had never been to the town, insisted it was not him seen in the video at an anti-Saddam rally but a member of the Shiite Dawa party of current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

"It was not me on the CD. I request you to allow Abdul Aziz Mohammed Bandar to enter the court, he is the one on the CD," he said. "There is no credibility to the words and statement that are given outside the court room--this is well known in the judicial system."

Bandar was later brought into the court, but the defence called for the trial to be suspended until it was clarified who was in the footage.