Friday, July 28 2006 11:40 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Baghdad: After nine months of testimony, the troubled trial of Saddam Hussein adjourned yesterday (July 27,2006) until mid-October, when the five judges are expected to render a verdict that could send the ousted president to the gallows.

The final hearing ended without the ousted president in court but with two of his seven co-defendants proclaiming their innocence and slamming the tribunal for alleged bias against them. Chief Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman adjourned the trial until October 16, when the verdicts are expected.

Saddam and the seven others have been on trial since October 19 for their alleged roles in the killing of more than 148 Shiite Muslims in jail as punishment for an assassination attempt against Saddam in the farming community in 1982.

The prosecution has asked for the death penalty for Saddam and two others. Executions in Iraq are carried out by hanging, but Saddam has asked to die like a soldier before a firing squad and not by the gallows like a common criminal.

Saddam is due to stand trial August 21 in the bloody suppression of Iraqi Kurd in the 1980s.

In the today's session, court-appointed attorneys read their final summations on behalf of former Vice President Taha Yassi Ramadan and Awad al-Banar, the revolutionary court judge who sentenced the Shiites in Dujail to death.

Attorneys argued that evidence submitted during the trial had failed to establish that the defendants ordered the deaths and torture suffered by the people of Dujail in the crackdown- the same argument put forward by Saddam's court-appointed lawyer in his summation Wednesday.