The security on the defense lawyers in Saddam Hussein's trial will be intensified after the body of one lawyer was found dumped in the street with two bullet wounds in the head hours. Earlier, gunmen dressed as security forces took him from his office.
According to the AP, 10 gunmen wearing police and military uniforms walked into Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi's office Thursday evening in Baghdad's Shaab neighborhood, and he went with them without resistance, police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.
The killing spread fear among the other 12 defense lawyers. On Friday, they demanded that the trial be postponed if investigations into the slaying are not finished. They also demanded the government provide them protection and even move the trial outside Iraq, said Khamees Hamid al-Ubaidi, one of Saddam's two lawyers.
Saddam's chief lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said after the kidnapping that defense lawyers had been threatened in recent weeks by e-mail, mobile phone text messages and telephone calls.
In another development, four US troops died in attacks. The latest American deaths occurred Thursday. Three Marines died when a bomb hit their patrol in Nasser wa Salam, 25 miles west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The surviving Americans clashed with the gunmen, killing two and capturing four. And in the northwestern town of Hit, an American soldier was killed by "indirect fire," a term that usually means a mortar or rocket attack.
Elsewhere, a bomb killed a policeman south of Baghdad early Saturday, while mortar fire targeted northern and western areas in the capital, injuring another, an interior ministry source said, according to AFP.
