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Hussein Co-Defendant's Lawyer Dead
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An attorney for a co-defendant of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been found dead the day after he was kidnapped by gunmen, according to Baghdad police and a member of the Iraqi lawyers' union.
Baghdad emergency police said the body of Sadoon al-Janabi was found around 11 a.m. (0800 GMT) near Firdous Mosque in the Banook neighborhood. The police said he was shot in the head with one bullet.
Al-Janabi was abducted as he worked in his Baghdad office Thursday evening by five men in two white Nissan pickup trucks, an official with Baghdad's emergency police told CNN.
He had been representing Awad Hamad al-Bandar, the former chief judge of Hussein's Revolutionary Court.
Bandar is accused of having sentenced to death more than 140 residents of Dujail following a failed assassination attempt on Hussein in 1982.
The defendant was seated next to the ousted Iraqi leader during the first day of the trial proceeding on Wednesday.
Bandar and Hussein are among eight former regime members being tried on charges related to the Dujail killings.
Badee' Arrif, an attorney representing former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz and two other defendants in another case before the Iraqi Special Tribunal, said the kidnapping would not deter him.
"I will continue to defend my clients to the end, no matter what," he told CNN.
However, the killing of the lawyer could delay the trial of Hussein and his seven co-defendants even further, CNN's Aneesh Raman reported on Friday.
The trial of Hussein, Bandar and the six other co-defendants has been adjourned until November 28.
The case is the first against Saddam, who is expected to be charged with crimes against humanity and genocide for acts committed during his almost three-decade rule over Iraq.
Al-Janabi was one of the few lawyers to address the court at Wednesday's hearing. He said the defense had had insufficient time to study the evidence and accused the U.S.-backed Baghdad government of driving the process, Reuters reported.
News of al-Janabi's kidnapping coincided with the announcement by London's Guardian newspaper that kidnappers had freed its Baghdad correspondent, Rory Carroll, 33, who was abducted Wednesday.
Other violence
Elsewhere in Iraq, insurgent shootings, suicide bombings and mortar attacks have killed at least 20 people since Wednesday night, Iraqi police said.
A mortar round landed inside a neighborhood elementary school Thursday morning in the al-Mansur district of Baghdad, killing a student and two adults. The attack wounded five other students.
Gunmen dressed as Iraqi policemen kidnapped the head of a concrete company elsewhere in the same district.
In the city's al-Dura section, an Iraqi intelligence officer and another person were killed Wednesday in a drive-by shooting. Two others in the car were wounded.
Gunmen opened fire on a car in the al-Sydiya neighborhood Wednesday night, killing three Baghdad International Airport employees on their way home from work.
At about the same time, gunmen in an Opel fired on Sunni worshippers as they were leaving the al-Hamid mosque in Baghdad, killing three elderly men.
A suicide car bomb killed four civilians and wounded 14 others outside the governor's office Thursday in Baquba, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Baghdad in Diyala province, emergency police said.
At the same time, the U.S. military reported a bomb slightly wounded a soldier outside a government building in Baquba. It was unclear whether the two reports covered the same incident.
In Khalis, nine miles (15 kilometers) northwest of Baquba, a suicide car bomb killed a police officer and wounded eight others about 1:30 Thursday afternoon at a major intersection checkpoint.
A few minutes earlier, a suicide car bomb killed four people and wounded 13 others across the street from the governor's compound in downtown Diyala, according to the U.S. military.
The attack targeted a coalition convoy traveling to the compound, the military said. Three of the wounded were Iraqi police and the other casualties were civilians.
Other developments
Iraqi election officials announced Thursday that voter turnout in Saturday's constitutional referendum was above 50 percent in 16 of the country's 18 provinces. About 8.4 million people voted in the January 30 election of the transitional National Assembly. That was about 60 percent of registered voters.
Three U.S. soldiers with Task Force Liberty were killed and one was wounded Wednesday night when their combat patrol struck a roadside bomb near the Iraqi city of Balad, the military said. A suicide car bomb killed a Marine from the 2nd Expeditionary Force Wednesday in Karabila, which is in Anbar province near the Syrian border. The deaths brought the number of U.S. troops who have died in Iraq to 1,985.
Iraqi army forces have captured Saddam Hussein's nephew, who is accused of funneling money from the ousted leader's family in Arab countries outside Iraq to insurgents inside the country, the interior minister said Thursday.
The U.S. military said Thursday it had killed a senior aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi during a series of coalition raids in western Iraq five days ago. A military news release said Sa'ad Ali Firas was a military leader in al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq group and participated in attacks in Ramadi and Falluja.
For more information, visit http://www.cnn.com.
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