Gunmen killed a second defence lawyer acting in Saddam Hussein's trial on Tuesday, renewing questions over whether the former president can get a fair trial amid Iraq's daily violence.
Another defence lawyer was slightly wounded in the attack on their car in Baghdad, police and defence team sources said. The shooting followed the murder of another defence lawyer who was shot the day after the televised start of proceedings on October 19.
It stoked controversy about whether the high-profile trial for crimes against humanity should be delayed or moved abroad. The defence team, which had already threatened to boycott the next hearing on November 28 unless measures were taken to protect them, said a fair trial was impossible in current circumstances.
In the latest attack, Adil al-Zubeidi was killed and his colleague Thamer Hamoud al-Khuzaie wounded when their car came under fire in the western Baghdad district of Hay al-Adil, police and defence team sources said.
Both men were on a team defending Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. Millions watching across the country last month saw Zubeidi argue forcefully with the judge, brandishing documents and jabbing his finger as he protested the validity of evidence.
In last month's attack, Saadoun al-Janabi, representing another of the eight defendants, was kidnapped from his office and shot. Local people said his killers identified themselves as Interior Ministry employees on October 20, the day after the lawyer's court appearance at the start of the trial.
"There can be no fair trial without providing security for witnesses, judges and lawyers on an equal footing. No trial can take place in such conditions," Issam Ghazzawi, a spokesman for Saddam's Jordan-based defence team, told Reuters in Amman.
Richard Dicker, who is monitoring the trial for Human Rights Watch in New York said: "This second killing ... heightens the concerns that we've had all along.
"It's urgent if this trial is to go forward that effective measures are put in place to protect the defence lawyers ... The Iraqi government and US advisers need to go the extra mile."
The government has denied involvement in Janabi's death but the killing renewed accusations of sectarian violence involving government forces and pro-government Shia militias ranged against Saddam's fellow minority Sunni Arabs.
IRAQI FORCES HIT: Bomb attacks aimed at Iraqi security forces killed at least nine people on Tuesday as violence continued unabated just over five weeks before a December 15 election that Washington hopes will set Iraq more firmly on the road to peace and democracy.
Four Iraqi soldiers were killed and a fifth critically wounded when a bomb blew up near their patrol car in the small town of Dali Abbas, north-east of Baghdad, police said.
Another bomb targeted a police patrol in Daquq, near Kirkuk, killing two policemen, police said. Another policeman was killed in Baquba, north of Baghdad, and a bomb blast killed a security forces colonel and his brother in the southern city of Basra.
In western Iraq near the Syrian border, Operation Steel Curtain entered its fourth day, with Marines and Iraqi troops pushing through the dusty town of Qusayba in search of al Qaeda insurgents. The US military says it has killed 36 rebels so far in the operation and has lost one US Marine dead.
Sectarian tensions are dominating campaigning for December's election, in which Sunni Arabs are expected to vote in large numbers for the first time since the fall of Saddam.
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