Saddam judge offers resignation - official
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-15 09:00

Since the trial opened on Oct. 19, two defense lawyers also have been assassinated and a third has fled the country. Police also uncovered a plot to fire rockets at the courtroom in late November.

U.S. Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., met with Amin in late December and told him to take stronger control of the proceeding.

Amin is a Kurd who before the Saddam trial was virtually unknown outside his home region.

The trial is scheduled to resume Jan. 24 after a monthlong recess. The defendants could face death by hanging if convicted.

Senior Iraqi election official Safwat Rashid said certified results from Iraq's contested elections could be released within a week. But he said that if any further complaints were received, it could take an additional 10 days to get final results.

Rashid and other officials said they were expecting a group of assessors from the International Mission for Iraqi Elections, or IMIE, to issue a preliminary report on the results Sunday or Monday.

An IMIE official, Mazin Shuaib, confirmed an interim report would be issued within days but said the team's final report would take about another week.

The assessors said they would release full uncertified results shortly after the report. Political parties and groups will then have time to file further complaints.

"There will be two days to receive the complaints from the political entities and the concerned parties," general director of Iraq's elector commission, Adel al-Lami, told Pan-arab Al-Arabiya television. "It will take another two days to look into these complaints, and then decide whether they are accepted or rejected."

He said if the complaints are accepted it "will take 10 days to respond."

Final election results have been delayed by Sunni Arab complaints of fraud. Although leading politicians have expressed hopes a government could be formed in February, most experts and officials agree it could take two to three months, as it did after the January 2005 elections for an interim government.

The governing United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite religious bloc, has a strong lead, according to preliminary results. But it won't win enough seats in the 275-member parliament to avoid forming a coalition with Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties.

In other developments Saturday:

? Britain's Foreign Office said Phil Sands, a British journalist kidnapped in Iraq, was rescued by chance on Dec. 31 after U.S. soldiers raided the farmhouse where he was being held on the outskirts of Baghdad.

? Iraqi and U.S. officials said they were working to free Jill Carroll, a female American journalist kidnapped off a Baghdad street a week ago, but they had not yet made contact with her captors.

? Gunmen killed a Shiite imam in northern Baghdad, police Maj. Falah al-Mohammadawi said.

? Police found the body of a man — his legs and hands bound — who had been shot in the head, Capt. Firas Qiti said.

? The lawyer of former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz appealed Saturday for President Bush to release his client for medical reasons. The lawyer has said Aziz has lost much weight and suffered several slight heart attacks in detention.