Comment from Issam Ghazawi, Saddam defence lawyer ADDS further bites

(8 Jan 2007) SHOTLIST
1. Issam Ghazawi, lawyer from Saddam's defence team, walks into room
2. Ghazawi gets papers out of cupboard
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Issam Ghazawi, lawyer from Saddam's defence team:
"Both the gentlemen are believers in God, they believe that their life span is put by God but not anybody else so they went to face the execution bravely, but they were detained from one o'clock in the morning until eight thirty in the morning waiting for the execution. This is great torture. Any human being waiting for death, it is more difficult then death itself."
4. Cutaway hands
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Issam Ghazawi, lawyer from Saddam's defence team:
"Mr Barzan, you know that he is the half brother of Mr President Saddam Hussein. He was deeply touched, as any human being with his brother executed. He had very painful feelings and he cried. It is not his usual behaviour to cry. You know Arabs, you don't cry easily. He was really devastated because his brother was executed, and he wished that he would have executed with him, it is much easier."
6. Cutaway hands
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Issam Ghazawi, lawyer from Saddam's defence team:
"They believe that executing Mr President Saddam Hussein is a crime beyond imagination. Because in any court of law in the world he would have been released. There is no evidence against him, but it is a political decision. Even Mr President Saddam knew that from the first day. He told us the judgement is in the draw and when they need it they will get it. So our battle is political, media and then last and least law. That's what he saw.
8. Tilt up of Ghazawi
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Issam Ghazawi, lawyer from Saddam's defence team:
"I think it will give a result because they wanted the President, and only the President as I believe, and now everybody and everyone else is minor, with respect to them, and the Secretary General of the United Nations has been saying stop the execution, he is talking legally. Legally they should not executed the President or any other defendant have because we have thirty days for more submission or more appeals, or asking for a retrial."
10. Cutaway Ghazawi
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Issam Ghazawi, lawyer from Saddam's defence team:
"He was really shocked, he was in a very bad psychological condition, even he cried knowing that he never cried in his life, maybe once when his father died, that's what he said. It's a tragedy for any human being to lose a brother in this way."
12. Cutaway Ghazawi sitting at desk
13.SOUNDBITE (English) Issam Ghazawi, lawyer from Saddam's defence team:
"Mr Tariq Aziz is in gravely ill condition. He is very sick. I imagined while we were waiting there with him and talking that he will die in his chair. We called the Americans to bring a doctor, they brought a doctor and a nurse and they give him something, I don't know what it is, but from the cuff, you can be sure that he is extremely ill, and he said when we met with him, the first minute, they didn't execute Saddam Hussein, they executed Iraq."
14. Cutaway hands
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Issam Ghazawi, lawyer from Saddam's defence team:
"We submitted a pleading to the court, and Mr Jaafar al-Mousawi, the chief prosecutor received it and signed it yesterday asking for a stay of the death penalty which might be carried out against our clients until the end of the legal period, and he received it, and we will see what will happen."
16. Ghazawi walks away from desk
STORYLINE
But the two condemned men still await death as Iraqi officials decide how to avoid the kind of outcry that followed the hanging of Saddam on December 30.

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...