The court trying Saddam Hussein held a brief session Wednesday, but handwriting specialists who had been due to testify on the authenticity of signatures on key documents did not show up. When they failed to attend, chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman adjourned the session after only five minutes until Monday. The experts had been the only witnesses due to appear on Wednesday, the AP reported.
Saddam and his seven co-defendants have denied that signatures on documents presented by the prosecution are theirs. The documents relate to a crackdown on a Shiite village after an assassination attempt on the ousted president in 1982.
Abdel-Rahman said that Saddam and co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim, the former head of the Mukhabarat intelligence agency, had refused to provide samples of their signatures and handwriting for comparison to the documents.
"In order to provide the experts with an additional chance to continue their mission to authenticate (the handwriting and signatures) properly and provide the court with the final report about the authentication process, it was decided to adjourn the court to Monday," he said.
