Saddam Hussein's family on Monday fired his defense team — a squabbling assemblage of more than 1,500 Arab and Western lawyers — with only about a month left before the former Iraqi president goes on trial, reported Associated Press.

The move was likely to complicate Iraqi politics at a time when the insurgency — made up largely of Saddam's Sunni Muslim loyalists — seeks to block attempts by the Shiite-dominated government to normalize the country and draw up a new constitution.

Saddam's family provided few details in a statement signed by the former Iraqi leader's eldest daughter Raghad, who lives in Jordan. The announcement said only that the family has hired Iraqi lawyer Khalil Dulaimi. The former team, the family said, was dismissed to "rearrange the legal defense campaign."

Abdel Haq Alani, Raghad's legal consultant, said: "What is basically taking place is restructuring of a chaotic situation which shouldn't go on."

He said Saddam's family was concerned that his defense could be harmed by conflicting legal opinions and disagreements among hundreds of Arab and international lawyers claiming to represent him. "It was media hype, but not a proper legal team," he said.

Saddam is to face the first of perhaps a dozen trials before the Iraqi Special Tribunal as early as next month. Last month, the tribunal accused Saddam and three others in the 1982 massacre of about 150 Shiites in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad, killings allegedly carried out in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt against Saddam.

No lawyer was at Saddam's side in July 2004 when he was arraigned in Baghdad on broad allegations that included killing rival politicians, gassing Kurds, invading Kuwait and killing tens of thousands while suppressing Kurdish and Shiite uprisings.

A prominent Jordanian lawyer and member of parliament's Legal Committee said the firing of the defense team would "weaken the defense."

"The move indicates that either Saddam doesn't trust his defense team, or that his lawyers aren't qualified," said Mahmoud Kharabsheh.

More than 1,500 volunteers — mainly Arabs — and some 25 lead lawyers from several countries including the United States, France, Jordan, Iraq and Libya, had joined the defense team after Saddam was captured in December 2003, eight months after he was toppled by invading US forces.

Bickering among the legal team surfaced a month ago, when Saddam's lead lawyer, Jordanian Ziad al-Khasawneh, resigned after accusing Raghad of favoring non-Arab lawyers. Al-Khasawneh claimed that two American team members — former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Washington lawyer Curtis Doebbler — had sought to take control of the group and silence his criticism of the US presence in Iraq.

Al-Khasawneh said the family's decision was meaningless because Saddam signed powers of attorney for several Iraqi, Arab and international lawyers.

"From a legal point of view, it's only the president, not anybody else, who can declare that those powers of attorney are null and void," he said. He refused to say which lawyers were involved.

Dulaimi, who was not available for comment Monday, was the first lawyer to meet Saddam in January and fellow lawyers said Saddam took a liking to him. Since January, Dulaimi has met Saddam or attended his hearings at the tribunal at least four times.

In a related development, an Iraqi judge who has interrogated Saddam accused the former leader's lawyers of fabricating charges that the former leader had been mistreated.

In an interview Sunday with Associated Press Television News, Judge Munir Haddad denied claims by Dulaimi that the former president was attacked during a court appearance in late July. He charged such stories were an attempt to get the trial moved to Europe, where the death sentence is banned.

(Chinadaily.com via agencies August 9, 2005)