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By Associated PressDistracted by the election, hampered by fears and feuds, Iraqi officials say their former leader's day in court won't come until 2006.
BAGHDAD - In the year since he was captured and hustled away to a secret location, Saddam Hussein has taken up gardening, undergone a hernia operation and written poetry that one visitor describes as "rubbishy."
What he has not done is meet with any of the 23 lawyers who claim to represent him. And with the country in the grips of an insurgency that remains strong, predicting when Iraq's most famous prisoner will be tried is no easier now than it was on the day he was pulled from his hiding spot in a spider hole near his hometown of Tikrit.
When Hussein first appeared before an Iraqi court in July, some officials predicted a swift trial. Since then, they have said October, November, or by the end of the year. Now, they expect it no earlier than the beginning of 2006, Iraq's National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told the Associated Press.
"This is going to be probably the trial of the century and we have to get it right," Rubaie said. "We can't suddenly try him and sentence him to either life in prison or whatever, execute him a 100 times as some people want to do."
Officials say the work of gathering evidence - documents, mass grave sites, testimony from victims - continues away from the public eye and beyond the reach of the insurgents. They insist that it is being done meticulously and legitimately.
American officials with the Department of Justice's Regime Crimes Liaison Office are advising the Iraqi Special Tribunal on the process of bringing Hussein to trial. The Americans paid the tribunal's budget of $75-million 2004-05.
But with elections approaching on Jan.30, the Iraqi government is in flux and is likely to stay that way for another year until a new constitution is drafted and another round of elections is held in December 2005.
Trainers also face a dearth of qualified Iraqi prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges. If proper attorneys are found, they take a new kind of risk - from guerrillas, believed to be mostly Sunni Muslims like Hussein, or others trying to stymie the trial.
"At various points in time they have had a number of judges who have since withdrawn," said Hania Mufti, a spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch in New York who has followed the case. "So that's been a practical problem on the ground."
American attention also has shifted to another figure - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - believed to be leading the brutal campaign of hostage-takings, beheadings and bombings that victimize both Americans and Iraqis.
No links have been found between Hussein and Zarqawi, who has a $25-million bounty on his head. Rubaie said officials suspect, however, that Hussein may have played a role in the continued insurgency.
"We have evidence that he has prepared for the military defeat and he has prepared his party for military resistance after the liberation," Rubaie said.
Hussein first appeared before the court July1, without a lawyer. He was presented with seven preliminary charges that included gassing thousands of Kurds in 1988, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the suppression of 1991 revolts by Kurds and Shiites, the murders of religious and political leaders and the mass displacement of Kurds in the 1980s.
Eleven other defendants were arraigned with him.
From Hussein's standpoint, little headway has been made since. He is said to have a 23-member legal team with lawyers from Belgium, Britain, France, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Tunisia, including lone American Curtis Doebbler, but has met none of them. A lawyer was supposed to meet him for the first time last Wednesday but the U.S. military canceled it.
"Denying him this right is a serious breach of international protocols," Hussein's lawyers, who were appointed by Hussein's wife, Sajida, said in a statement Sunday timed with the anniversary.
The Jordan-based team called for Hussein's immediate release, calling his detention "illegal right from the very beginning."
"We are extremely disappointed," said Ziad al-Khasawneh. "Nobody knows anything, except God and the American administration."
Some Iraqis claim the process has been politicized. Speculation once swirled that Hussein would be hastily tried and executed during the hubbub of the U.S. election. Salem Chalabi, the tribunal director, was abruptly ousted in September, and accused Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of pushing for show trials to boost his popularity ahead of the Jan.30 elections.
"Saddam could reveal very important information and his trial could become a lesson not only for the Iraqi people but for history and humanity," said Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress party, led by Chalabi's uncle Ahmad Chalabi. "Unfortunately, this opportunity is going away, and this court is losing its credibility."
In the meantime, Hussein seems to have settled into a humdrum existence behind bars.
He receives regular visits from the Red Cross, which passes letters from him to his family. He gets out of his 12-foot by 15-foot cell twice a day for recreation, which includes exercising and tending plants, said Rubaie, who visited him three months ago.
Hussein has also undergone a hernia operation and his blood pressure varies, a U.S. official said. He also has an enlarged prostate, which isn't an immediate concern.
He is said to be writing a novel, Get Out, You Damned, excerpts of which have appeared in a London-based Arab newspaper, and has also written poetry.
"I can tell you one thing, they're really the most rubbishy poems on Earth," Rubaie told AP. "Even I could write poems in English better than he could in Arabic."
Also Sunday ...IN FALLUJAH: American warplanes pounded Fallujah with missiles Sunday as insurgents fought running battles with coalition forces in the volatile western Iraqi city. The U.S. military said two troops died in separate incidents.
POLITICS AS USUAL: Iraq's postwar political hopefuls continued jostling for position ahead of Jan.30 elections. Two moderate, mainly Sunni Muslim parties announced they would field slates for the polls, despite calls from some Sunni politicians for a boycott.
POWER OUTAGE: A large swath of Iraq lost electricity Sunday after a fire erupted in a major power plant north of Baghdad.