Baghdad, (Iraq): Handwriting experts authenticated Saddam Hussein's signatures on more documents related to a crackdown on Shiites in the 1980s, the chief judge in his trial said on Wednesday.
Among the documents was apparently an order approving death sentences for 148 Shiites.
Saddam and his seven co-defendants were in the courtroom in the latest session of the trial on Wednesday, as chief judge Raouf Abdul Rahman read a report by handwriting experts on two documents said to be signed by Hussein.
The experts confirmed the signatures were the former Iraqi leader's, Abdul Rahman said.
The experts' report did not give details on the documents, but one of them was dated June 16, 1984. That is the same date of a memo approving the death sentences of the Shiites, presented by prosecutors earlier in the six-month-old trial.
Hussein and his co-defendants are on trial for the deaths of the 148 Shiites and the imprisonment of hundreds of others in a crackdown launched following an assassination attempt against Saddam in 1982.
In an earlier session, Hussein had refused to confirm or deny his signature on documents. Some of his co-defendants had said their alleged signatures on other documents were forgeries.
In a session of the trial Monday, experts said they had authenticated Hussein's signature on a 1982 memo approving rewards for six intelligence agents involved in the crackdown.
The defense immediately disputed the experts' results. "We contest all the details of the report," chief defense lawyer Khalil Dulaimi said.
"We demand the appointment of other experts who are not employees of the Interior Ministry," defense lawyer Khamees Ubaidi said. "We demand international experts with international expertise - except for ones from Iran for its obvious hostility against Arabs and Islam."
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