AMMAN, Jordan, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- Toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's defense team intends to pursue legal action against his execution "crime" in Baghdad, one of his lawyers said Thursday.
Head of Jordan's Bar Association and member of Saddam's defense, Saleh Armouti, told United Press International the defense's mission has not ended with the hanging of the former Iraqi president on Saturday.
He said the defense team saw the execution of the "martyr president" as a blatant violation of international and human rights charters, stressing the attorneys will "not rest until those traitors and criminals, starting with American President George Bush, are brought to justice for war crimes in the international court in The Hague."
Armouti, among dozens of international lawyers who represented the former Iraqi leader, insisted a prisoner of war "cannot be executed in this ugly manner that is provocative to millions of Muslims in the world."
Saddam Hussein's hanging drew sharp criticism from across the Arab world as television footage, filmed by an Iraqi official at the gallows, showed his executioners chanting slogans praising Muqtada al-Sadr, one of Iraq's Shiite clerics whose al-Mehdi Army militia has been blamed for killing thousands of Sunnis in Iraq in the past two years.
The footage also showed masked guards hurling insults at Saddam, who was not permitted to meet his lawyers before he was hanged on charges of killing 148 people in the Shiite town of Dujail following a foiled assassination attempt against his life in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, eyewitnesses told UPI in Baghdad that Iraqi army officers, dressed in official military uniforms, had gone Thursday to pay their respects on the death of Saddam in a condolence hall in the Sunni town of Fallujah.
In Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, and for the fifth straight day, hundreds of people continued to converge on homes that were opened for condolences.
