PARIS (Reuters) - The French lawyer known for defending Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and guerrilla Carlos the Jackal said Saturday that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s nephew had chosen him to represent the deposed Iraqi president.
Jacques Verges told Reuters in a telephone interview he had received a letter from Ali Barzan al-Tikriti, whose father Barzan al-Tikriti is Saddam's half-brother, asking him to defend the former Iraqi dictator, captured by U.S. forces in December.
The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad is setting up a war crimes tribunal to try Saddam on charges which may include genocide and crimes against humanity.
Washington has said the 66-year-old Saddam, whose interrogation is being led by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) (CIA (news - web sites)), should be tried in Iraq (news - web sites).
Verges, who is also defending former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, said he had accepted the job of defending Saddam and suggested his strategy would focus on the role played by the United States and other countries in supporting the Iraqi leader in the 1980s.
"We know very well that the Anglo-Americans armed Saddam Hussein, that the chemical weapons were sold by the allies," Verges said in a telephone interview.
SIGHTS ON RUMSFELD
Washington helped Saddam obtain intelligence and military equipment and, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control document in the U.S. Senate record, Iraq also obtained from the United States biological agents that could have been turned into weapons.
The United States was at the time supporting Iraq in its war against the old U.S. foe Iran, at a time when Saddam used chemical weapons against Iranian forces and Iraqi Kurds.
Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the former Soviet Union also supplied Iraq with equipment, expertise and funding over the years.
The West's close military and commercial relationship with Saddam ended when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Verges singled out Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a key advocate of last year's U.S.-led war to oust Saddam, for his role 20 years ago as a special envoy of U.S. President Ronald Reagan (news - web sites).
He said that if a trial of Saddam took place, Rumsfeld would have to "take a seat next to the leader."
Verges decried U.S. treatment of Saddam since his capture and said he feared the former dictator could be killed before he had a chance to stand trial.
The United States declared Saddam a prisoner of war last month, meaning he has certain rights under the Geneva Convention on treatment of such detainees. But U.S. officials have said they do not rule out the possibility that the United States might re-evaluate that status in the future.
Verges has taken on tough cases before. Barbie, known as the "butcher of Lyon," was jailed for life in 1987 for crimes against humanity in Nazi-occupied France.
Carlos the Jackal, whose real name is Illich Ramirez Sanchez, is serving a life sentence in France for a string of deadly attacks in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s.
Charges against Saddam could cover his campaign against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, the use of chemical weapons on Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians, the crushing of Kurdish and Shi'ite Muslim uprisings in 1991 and the oppression of minority groups in the south and north of the country.
The United States and Britain cited Iraqi chemical and biological arms as their justification for invading the country last March. No such weapons have come to light since they toppled Saddam, despite intensive searches.