Saddam's legal team denied same rights as prosecution, American lawyer says

~ Curtis Doebbler claims the prosecution has spent $300 million in collecting evidence to build their case.

AMMAN, Jordan -- Saddam Hussein's lawyers are denied the same rights and resources as the prosecutors in his trial, a U.S.-based legal adviser to the deposed Iraqi leader said Sunday.

Curtis Doebbler said Saddam's legal team is at a disadvantage compared with the prosecution, which he said has spent $300 million and has "hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and dozens of American lawyers to assist them."

"All these resources have been deployed to collect evidence for more than two years" to build a case against Saddam, he said in a statement e-mailed by the Jordan-based defense team to The Associated Press.

By contrast, Doebbler said, Saddam's defense team "consists of volunteer lawyers without adequate resources or the ability to find experts" or adequate witnesses.

He said the defense cannot visit the sites of the alleged crimes "because of the state of insecurity in Iraq."

Saddam was deposed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He went on trial in October 2005 along with seven members of his former regime on charges of killing 148 Shiites in the aftermath of an assassination attempt on the then-president in 1982.

Doebbler, a Washington-based law professor specializing in international law, said the non-Iraqi lawyers for the defense "cannot even enter Iraq to visit their clients regularly."

In Iraq, Saddam's attorneys are "held under virtual house arrest without access to telephones, faxes, computers, books, or any adequate facilities to do their work," he said. "Even their legal notes are read and only papers approved by American officials can be passed to their clients."

The legal team has complained that their papers were read during searches before they enter the court.

He rebuked human rights groups without citing any by name, saying they had failed to protest the conditions of Saddam's trial.

"It is quite incredible that the international community silently watches a process that continues to violate more and more human rights," he said.

Separately, Saddam's eldest daughter praised her uncle, Barzan Ibrahim, and the others on trial with her father as "Iraq's real men," in an interview aired Sunday on pan-Arab satellite network Al-Arabiya.

"My uncle Barzan has been remarkable in court, very courageous and a real hero," Raghad said. "He has clarified the wrong impression that was made about Iraqi men. Those who surround my father, they what could be called Iraq's real men, the honorable image that represents our country."

Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother, appeared in one court session in February dressed only in an undershirt and long underwear, struggling with guards as he was pulled into the courtroom. The former chief of intelligence then sat on the floor with his back to the judge in protest for much of the session.

Raghad, who has been living in Amman, Jordan, with her sister, Rana, and their children since August 2003, said she believed most Iraqis were not happy with the trial, and those who acted pleased "were chosen by a certain party to reach a certain goal."