Iraq Watch: January 24, 2006

Saddam Trial Postponed

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The resumption of the trial against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was postponed, once again, until Sunday due to disagreement's over the chief judge. Authorities announced yesterday that Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman would fill the spot left vacated by departing chief judge Rizqar Mohammed Amin.

The postponement is yet another set back in a long line of controversy's surrounding the judicial proceedings against the former Iraqi leader and seven co-defendants. All eight defendants are being tried for their alleged roles in the 1982 Dujail massacre in which more than 140 Shiites were executed following an assassination attempt against Hussein.

In ongoing violence Tuesday, two German engineers were abducted near the town of Beiji, located some 155 miles north of Baghdad. The German nationals, who were working for an Iraq state-owned detergent plant, were kidnapped at gunpoint by a group of men wearing Iraqi army uniforms.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced the deaths of four U.S. service members on Tuesday. Two MND-Baghdad soldiers died in a roadside bombing yesterday in a southeastern district of the capital. Additionally, two U.S. Marines - assigned to the IIMEF - were killed in a non-hostile vehicle accident on Monday near al-Taqaddum.

To the south, in the predominately Shiite city of Basra, British forces launched a series of raids on Tuesday detaining 14 people, including at least five members of the city's police force. The British military said the raids in Iraq's second largest city were part of an increased effort to crackdown on local militias.

Elsewhere, militants sabotaged a vital oil pipeline west of Kirkuk forcing the line - which exports crude oil to a major terminal in Ceyhan, Turkey - to be shut down, causing oil exportation to be temporally halted. Thick, black smoke could be seen pouring into the air at the site of the explosion.