Barzan Ibrahim Al-Tikriti - Trial and Courtroom Charges

Trial and Courtroom Charges

Al-Tikriti's trial started on October 19, 2005. He was a defendant in the Iraq Special Tribunal's Al-Dujail trial, and Abd al-Semd al-Husseini was his defence counsel. In a first stage, Al-Tikriti stood trial before a five-judge panel for the Dujail Massacre. He was charged for crimes against humanity, simultaneously with seven other former high officials (Taha Yassin Ramadan, Saddam Hussein, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, Abdullah Kadhem Roweed Al-Musheikhi, Ali Daeem Ali, Mohammed Azawi Ali and Mizher Abdullah Roweed Al-Musheikhi). They were said to have ordered and overseen the killings, in July 1982, of more than 140 Shiite men from Dujail, a village 35 miles north of Baghdad. The men were allegedly killed in retribution after a July 8, 1982 attack on the presidential motorcade as it passed through the village. It was alleged that, apart from the killings, hundreds of women and children from the town were jailed for years in desert internment camps, and that the date palm groves, which sustained the local economy and were the families' livelihood, were destroyed.

During the first court session on October 19, 2005, al-Tikriti pleaded not guilty. During his trial, he was known for his angry outbursts in court and was ejected on several occasions.

In the weeks following the first audience, serious security concerns for the defense team of Hussein and the other accused became apparent. On October 21, 2005, 36 hours after the first hearing, a group of unidentified armed men dragged one of the attorneys from his office in east Baghdad and shot him dead. A few days later, a second lawyer was killed in a drive-by shooting, and a third, injured in that attack, subsequently fled Iraq for sanctuary in Qatar.

As a result, calls for the trial to be held abroad were heard. The defense lawyers, supported by the Iraqi Bar Association, imposed a boycott on the trial until their security concerns were met with specific measures. A few days before the trial was to resume, the defense team announced that it had accepted offers of protection from Iraqi and U.S. officials and would appear in court on November 28, 2005. The agreement is said to have included the same level of protection that is offered to the Iraqi judges and prosecutors, with measures such as armored cars and teams of bodyguards.

After a short court session on November 28, 2005, during which some testimony regarding the killings in Dujail was presented, Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin ordered a one-week adjournment until December 5, to grant the defence teams time to find new counsel.

On March 12, 2006, the prosecutor announced that if Hussein and his seven co-defendants were sentenced to death in the Dujail case, the sentence would be carried out as soon as possible. Thus, the other cases for which they were indicted would not be heard in court. On June 19, 2006, the prosecutor asked the court, in his closing arguments, that the death penalty be imposed upon al-Tikriti, Hussein and Ramadan.

On November 5, 2006, al-Tikriti was sentenced to death by hanging.