BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A court trying Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity could delay its verdict by a few days, the chief prosecutor said on Sunday, in a move that would shift the announcement until after U.S. midterm elections.
The U.S.-backed court had been due to deliver a verdict on November 5, two days before U.S. elections in which President George W. Bush's Republicans fear they could lose control of Congress.
The chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Moussawi, said the Iraqi High Tribunal was still working on the judgment. "We will know a day or two before the trial if they are ready to announce the verdict," Moussawi told Reuters.
I should note, of course, that Iraq is saying that the United States had nothing to do with the conviction date:
U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad denied Washington had any say over the timing of the verdict or the court's decisions, saying the American role was limited to logistics and security.
"The United States had nothing to do with the selection of the date and we don't know whether the judges have come to a judgment or not," Khalilzad told CNN in an interview.
Of course, Khalilzad is our ambasaddor, so I'd hardly expect him to say "Yeah, we changed the date so that the news will be inundated with footage of Saddam's conviction and remind voters who took him down in the first place."
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