Iraq Judge Who Presided over Saddam Hussein’s Trial Dies of COVID-19

Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, chief judge presiding over the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, gestures inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad September 25, 2006. (Reuters)
Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, chief judge presiding over the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, gestures inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad September 25, 2006. (Reuters)
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Iraq Judge Who Presided over Saddam Hussein’s Trial Dies of COVID-19

Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, chief judge presiding over the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, gestures inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad September 25, 2006. (Reuters)
Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, chief judge presiding over the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, gestures inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad September 25, 2006. (Reuters)

A retired Iraqi judge who presided over the trial of Iraq’s late dictator Saddam Hussein has died after battling COVID-19, the country’s top judicial body said Friday.

According to Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, 52, passed away in a hospital in Baghdad where he was being treated for complications from the coronavirus.

Oreibi graduated from the Faculty of Law at Baghdad university in 1992 and was appointed a judge in 2000 by a presidential decree.

He shot to fame after he was named an investigative judge in the trial of Saddam and his regime in August 2004. He later took over as the lead judge in Saddam’s trial for genocide, which also included Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, and five other defendants on charges related to their roles in the bloody 1987-1988 crackdown against Kurdish rebels, known as the Anfal campaign.

The prosecution alleged that around 180,000 people died, many of them civilians killed by poison gas. Saddam was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death; he was executed on Dec. 30, 2006.

Oreibi tolerated very few disruptions from Saddam and his co-defendants during the trial — even throwing the deposed Iraqi leader out of the courtroom several times amid fiery exchanges between them.

In one session, after a shouting match between them, he ordered Saddam held in solitary confinement for several days.

The statement from the judicial council lauded Oreibi for his what it said was courage in handling the trial of Saddam and the former regime.



Barrack ‘Satisfied' with Lebanon Reply to US Roadmap to Disarm Hezbollah

A handout photo released by the Lebanese Presidency press office on July 7, 2025 shows Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun (R) meeting with US envoy Thomas Barrack at the presidential palace of Baabda east of Beirut. (Photo by Lebanese Presidency / AFP)
A handout photo released by the Lebanese Presidency press office on July 7, 2025 shows Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun (R) meeting with US envoy Thomas Barrack at the presidential palace of Baabda east of Beirut. (Photo by Lebanese Presidency / AFP)
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Barrack ‘Satisfied' with Lebanon Reply to US Roadmap to Disarm Hezbollah

A handout photo released by the Lebanese Presidency press office on July 7, 2025 shows Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun (R) meeting with US envoy Thomas Barrack at the presidential palace of Baabda east of Beirut. (Photo by Lebanese Presidency / AFP)
A handout photo released by the Lebanese Presidency press office on July 7, 2025 shows Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun (R) meeting with US envoy Thomas Barrack at the presidential palace of Baabda east of Beirut. (Photo by Lebanese Presidency / AFP)

US envoy Thomas Barrack said on Monday that he was "unbelievably satisfied" with the Lebanese government's reply to an American proposal on how to disarm Hezbollah.

"What the government gave us was something spectacular in a very short period of time. I'm unbelievably satisfied with the response," Barrack told reporters after meeting Lebanese President Joseph Aoun at Baabda Palace, without giving details of the response.

Aoun's team gave Barrack a seven-page reply to his June 19 proposal.

Hezbollah emerged badly damaged from a war with Israel last year that eliminated much of the group's leadership, killed thousands of its fighters and left tens of thousands of its supporters displaced from their destroyed homes.

The group has been under pressure in recent months both within Lebanon and from Washington to completely relinquish its weapons.

Barrack's proposal would see Hezbollah fully disarmed within four months in exchange for the withdrawal of Israeli troops occupying several posts in south Lebanon and a halt to Israeli airstrikes.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem reiterated Sunday the group’s refusal to lay down its weapons before Israel withdraws from all of southern Lebanon and stops its airstrikes.

Hezbollah has already relinquished a number of weapons depots in southern Lebanon to the Lebanese army in line with a US-brokered truce that ended last year's war.

The truce also stipulates that Israeli troops withdraw. Hezbollah has pointed to the troops' continued occupation of at least five posts in southern Lebanon as a main violation.

“How can you expect us not to stand firm while the Israeli enemy continues its aggression, continues to occupy the five points, and continues to enter our territories and kill?” Qassem said in a video address on Sunday. “We will not be part of legitimizing the occupation in Lebanon and the region. We will not accept normalization (with Israel).”