In a makeshift courtroom in a Baghdad palace complex where he once indulged friends with hunting and fishing trips, Saddam Hussein arrived in handcuffs on Thursday to face charges of crimes against humanity.
The courtroom is close to the palace in the middle of an artificial lake stocked with fish on the southwest fringe of Baghdad. Members of Saddam’s inner circle used to go hunting in the grounds, and soldiers say Saddam’s playboy son Uday used one of the palace buildings for his assignations.
The complex is now Camp Victory, a sprawling U.S. military base where top U.S. generals in Iraq have their headquarters. Nearby is Camp Cropper, a high-security detention facility where Saddam and his lieutenants are believed to be held.
The small sandstone-colored court building is next to a blue-domed mosque, and was formerly the imam’s residence.
It has been used for several courts martial, and for last week’s hearing for Specialist Sabrina Harman, one of the seven American soldiers charged with abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail -- where thousands of Iraqis were imprisoned and tortured under Saddam.
Soldiers have tinted the windows of the octagonal building and reinforced them with sandbags. Around it, several Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles were deployed.
Reporters at the courtroom said Saddam arrived in an armored bus, escorted by four U.S. Humvee military vehicles and a military ambulance. Handcuffed and chained, he was taken into the building by two Iraqi prison guards, while six others waited outside.
Antique art
Legal custody of Saddam was given to Iraq on Wednesday but U.S. forces will continue to guard him.
Saddam built palaces all over Iraq, for the use of his family and top officials. According to Iraqi folklore he slept in a different place every night and cooks in every palace were ordered to prepare dinner every night just in case he arrived.
When U.S. soldiers swept through Iraq in March and April last year they found that many of the palaces appeared unused for months or years, with furniture filmed with dust and grime.
Inside the palace where the hearing took place, the floor is made of marble and the doors are engraved wood. Antique Iraqi art hangs on the walls and on the floor of the courtroom is a silk rug officials say is worth $40,000, a leftover from the days when Saddam was in power.
The palace was officially built in honor of troops who recaptured the Faw Peninsula in southeast Baghdad during the long Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when Saddam was at the height of his power and regarded as an ally by the United States.
On Thursday, toppled from power and facing possible execution, he was a prisoner in one of his own palaces.
