Saddam Hussein's trial entered a new phase Monday, when the chief judge 
formally charged the ousted Iraqi leader with murder, torture of women and 
children and the illegal arrest of 399 people in a crackdown against Shiites in 
the 1980s. 
 
 
 |  Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein arrives 
 at his trial in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, Monday, May 15, 
 2006 in Baghdad, Iraq. [AP]
 | 
 Saddam, who sat 
alone in the defendants' pen as the charges were read, refused to 
enter a plea when chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman asked him if he were guilty 
or not.  
 
 
"I can't just say yes or no to this. You read all this for the sake of public 
consumption, and I can't answer it in brief," Saddam replied. "This will never 
shake one hair of my head." 
"You are before Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq. I am the president of Iraq 
according to the will of the Iraqis and I am still the president up to this 
moment," he said. Abdel-Rahman entered a "not guilty" plea on Saddam's behalf. 
Saddam and seven former members of his regime have been on trial for nearly 
seven months over the crackdown against residents of the town of Dujail. 
Under the Iraqi system, the court first hears plaintiffs outline their 
complaint against the defendants and the prosecutions' evidence against them. 
Then the judges decide on specific charges, and the defense begins making its 
case. 
Security forces arrested hundreds of Dujail residents, including entire 
families, after a 1982 attempt on Saddam's life in the town. Witnesses, 
including women, have recounted being tortured while in prison, farmlands were 
razed in retaliation and 148 Shiites were sentenced to death in connection to 
the shooting attack on Saddam. All 148 were killed, either dying under 
interrogation or executed. 
The charges against Saddam read by Abdel-Rahman included the arrest of 399 
people, the torture of women and children, and ordering the razing of farmlands. 
He was also charged in the deaths of nine people who Abdel-Rahman said were 
killed in the first days of the crackdown. Saddam was not charged in the deaths 
of the 148 who were sentenced to death by his Revolutionary Court. 
"After allegations of coming under an assassination attempt, you issued 
orders to security forces and the army to arrest residents and use all weapons 
against them," Abdel-Rahman told Saddam. 
"As a result for your orders to use force against Dujail residents, nine 
people were killed in the first two days ... and 399 others were arrested," he 
said. 
After Saddam refused to enter a plea, Abdel-Rahman called in the next 
defendant, Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim, former head of the Mukhabarat 
intelligence agency. He read the same charges against Ibrahim, adding a charge 
of murder for the killing of the 148 Shiites sentenced to death. 
"All you said are lies, everything you mentioned is a lie," Ibrahim replied 
when Abdel-Rahman asked him for his plea. 
Abdel-Rahman then proceded to call in each of the remaining defendants one by 
one to read the charges against them.