BAGHDAD, Oct 22: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who normally opposes capital punishment, said on Saturday he would not sign a death decree for Saddam Hussein if he were convicted, but that two vice presidents could sign in his place.

“I will not sign, neither his sentence nor that of anybody else,” Mr Talabani told the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera, before adding: “I didn’t say that I would be opposed to this sentence.”

The New York-based Human Rights Watch warned on Friday that the murder of Saadoun Janabi, attorney for an official in Saddam Hussein’s office, threatened ‘to discourage lawyers from vigorously representing defendants at the court, further undermining the defendants’ right to a fair trial’.

Saddam’s chief defence lawyer Khalil al Dulaimi ‘will not be coming any longer to Jordan for security reasons’, a member of the defence team, said.

But a senior interior ministry official in Baghdad said: “The ministry is ready to ensure without conditions the protection of any lawyer or other person’ involved in the trial. “No one has asked for it.” —AFP