Defiant Saddam Pleads Not Guilty

Saddam Hussein pleaded innocent to charges that include pre-meditated murder and torture and argued with the judges Wednesday, challenging the legitimacy of the court as his trial opened in the former headquarters of his Baath Party.

The three-hour session was stormy, with Saddam arguing with judges and defying guards. When a break was called, Saddam stood, smiling. He was asked to step out of the room but when two guards tried to grab his arms to escort him out, he angrily shook them off. They tried to grab him again, and Saddam struggled to get free, being shaken during a shoving match that lasted about a minute as they yelled at each other.

Immediately after the break, a judge announced the trial would resume in late November. Saddam and seven former members of his regime face could face the death penalty by hanging if convicted over the 1982 massacre of nearly 150 Shiites in the town of Dujail.

After presiding judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd, read the defendants their rights and the charges against them — which also include forced expulsions and illegal imprisonment — he asked each for their plea. He started with the ousted dictator, saying "Mr. Saddam, go ahead. Are you guilty or innocent?"

Saddam could be seen saying something too quietly to be heard, and Amin read out the plea, "Innocent."

A thinner, older-looking Saddam entered the courtroom earlier Wednesday. Nearly as soon as he was secured into a small barred pen, Saddam became argumentative, challenging the legitimacy of the court trying him two years after his capture.

When the trial began, the 68-year-old ousted Iraqi leader — wearing a salt-and-pepper beard in a dark gray suit and open-collared white shirt — stood and asked the presiding judge: "Who are you? I want to know who you are."

"I preserve my constitutional rights as the president of Iraq," Saddam said. "I do not recognize the body that has authorized you and I don't recognize this aggression. What is based on injustice is unjust ... I do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect."

The judge tried to get Saddam to formally identify himself almost a dozen times, but Saddam repeatedly refused. After several moments, at the judge's request, Saddam sat down.

For a while, it seemed as if the judge was in danger of losing control of the courtroom as he and Saddam argued back and forth, CBS News correspondent Lara Logan reports for The Early Show.

Amin later read the charges, which are the same for all the defendants, and told them they face possible execution if convicted. Saddam didn't stay quiet during the judge's speech, though. In the middle of the charges being read, Logan reports that he stood up and said, "I said I am the Iraqi leader!"

After hearing Saddam's plea and taking a short break, the judge announced that the session was adjourned until Nov. 28.

The panel of five judges will both hear the case and render a verdict in what could be the first of several trials of Saddam for atrocities carried out during his 23-year-rule.

The former leader and his seven co-defendants were seated in three rows of black chairs, fenced-in behind a low white barred metal barrier, in the center of the court directly in front of the judges' bench.

As the trial started in Baghdad, residents of Dujail — where the massacre the former Iraqi leader is being tried for took place — held a demonstration calling for the execution of Saddam. The slayings that are the subject of Saddam's trial took place after an attempt on Saddam's life there, CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata reports. Although Saddam promised only the guilty would be punished, scores were killed.

And

CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk said the outcome of Saddam's tribunal, the rest of which is being strategically delayed until November so evidence can be reviewed, may be obvious. Saddam will likely be found guilty because "there is 'smoking gun' evidence of his responsibility for the 1982 massacre of civilians, including children, in Dujail."

At the start of the session, Amin called the defendants into the room one by one. Saddam was the last to enter, escorted by two Iraqi guards in bulletproof vests who guided him by the elbow. He glanced at journalists watching through bulletproof glass from an adjoining room. He motioned for his escorts to slow down a little.

After sitting, he greeted his co-defendants, saying "Peace be upon you," sitting next to co-defendant Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court.

The other defendants include Saddam's former intelligence chief Barazan Ibrahim, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan and other lower-level Baathist civil servants. Ramadan also refused to identify himself to the judge. "I repeat what President Saddam Hussein has said," he added. The other defendants agreed to state their names.

The trial is taking place in the marble building that once served as the National Command Headquarters of his feared Baath Party. The building in Baghdad's Green Zone — the heavily fortified district where Iraq's government, parliament and the U.S. Embassy are located — was ringed with 10-foot blast walls and U.S. and Iraqi troops, with several Humvees and at least one tank deployed outside. U.S. soldiers led sniffer dogs around the grounds, looking for explosives.

Many Iraqis were gathered around television sets to watch the trial, which was broadcast on state-run Iraqi stations and satellite stations across the Arab world. In particular, the Shiite Muslim majority and the Kurdish minority — the two communities most oppressed by Saddam's regime — have eagerly awaited the chance to see the man who ruled Iraq with unquestioned and total power held to justice.

"I'm very happy today. We've prayed for this day for years," said Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, who was an anti-Saddam opposition leader in exile for years and now is one of the fiercest proponents of the purge of Baathists from the government.

But across the Tigris River in the mainly Sunni Arab district of Azamiyah, some were embittered over the trial of Saddam, whose regime was dominated by Sunni Arabs who have now lost their power.

"Saddam is the lesser of evils," said Sahab Awad Maaruf, an engineer, comparing Saddam to the current Shiite-Kurdish led government. "He's the only legitimate leader for Iraqis."

The court is operating not only under its own rules — laid out when the court was created in 2003 while Iraq was still run by American administrators — but also by a 1971 Saddam-era criminal law that some have criticized as not up to international standards.

That law says the judges can issue a guilty verdict if they are "satisfied" by the evidence — seen as lower standard of proof than "convinced beyond a reasonable doubt."