Lawyer, Saadoun Janabi, attorney for a Defendant In Hussein Trial Is Slain

On October 20^th , Saadoun Janabi, a defence lawyer in the Saddam Hussein trial was dragged from his office by 10 masked gunmen in his office in Baghdad's eastern Shaab district  before he was found shot dead, on the same day, around 11 a.m. Baghdad time near a mosque just miles from his law office. Police say he was killed with a single shot to the head. two bullet holes in the head,

The kidnapping came just one day after the trial of Saddam and his seven co-defendants started for slaughter of 148 Shiite residents in Dujail in 1982 after Saddam survived an assassination attempt.

Al-Janabi was representing Awad Hamad al-Bandar, the former chief judge of Hussein's Revolutionary Court, who is accused of having ordered the death sentences for 143 residents of the city of Dujail after a failed 1982 assassination attempt on Hussein.Bandar, who was seen seated next to Hussein during the first day of the former Iraqi leader's trial ,  is one of seven former regime members who are being tried on charges related to the Dujail massacre.

Janabi was one of 13 defense lawyers representing the former regime members. Janabi was representing Awad Haman Bander, the former head of Hussein's Revolutionary Court. Hussein, Bander and six others from the Sunni-dominated former government face death by hanging if convicted on charges of murder and torture in the 1982 executions of 143 Shiite men and boys from the town of Dujail after Hussein's motorcade was ambushed there in a failed assassination attempt.

The New York-based watchdog group Human Rights Watch warned that the killing of the lawyer, Saadoun Janabi, would have a chilling effect on all sides in the trial and urged U.S. forces to provide security for anyone in the trial who asks for it.