SADDAM HUSSEIN and 11 of his most senior lieutenants will be taken into Iraqi legal custody today to face prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated during his 35-year dictatorship.

The 12 men include two of Saddam’s half-brothers, Tariq Aziz, his former Deputy Prime Minister, and Ali Hassan al-Majid, or “Chemical Ali”, the man accused of gassing 5,000 Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988. They will make a televised appearance before an Iraqi judge tomorrow, where they will be presented with arrest warrants handed down by the Iraqi Special Tribunal.

But they will continue to be held in a US-run jail, supervised by American and Iraqi guards, because the new Government is not confident of its ability to prevent them being sprung from prison.

Saddam is reported to be held in Camp Cropper, a US jail at Baghdad’s international airport. Details of the time and place of the proceedings are being closely guarded, but according to the head of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, tomorrow’s court appearance will be filmed and televised.

“Saddam Hussein and 11 other detainees will be handed over to the Iraqi Government tomorrow and they will be charged by the judges the next day,” the interim Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, said yesterday, just one day after assuming legal control of Iraq from the departing US proconsul, Paul Bremer.

“The Multi-National Force has accepted our request (to guard the detainees), but Iraq maintains total sovereignty over them.”

It will be the first time that Saddam will have been seen by Iraqis since the bearded dictator was filmed having his teeth examined by US Army doctors after his arrest on December 13 last year.

“On the street people just won’t be able to believe that they are seeing this,” Salem Chalabi, head of the tribunal, said.

“There has been a suspicion among Iraqis that Saddam Hussein and other detainees are not going to get tried,” he said. “If people see that the rule of law is established, it will have a positive impact.”

The trial itself is unlikely to take place before next year because of the daunting task of assembling evidence and of finding witnesses prepared to give evidence against a man still regarded with fear.

Prosecutors also face sifting through more than 30 tonnes of documents relating to the former regime’s misdeeds, assembled by the coalition, Iraqi political parties and NGOs.

They include a document from 1983 describing procedures to be followed in killing 8,000 members of the Kurdish Barzani tribe and a taperecording of what sounds like Saddam ordering the killings, according to Mr Chalabi.

The tribunal is attempting to establish procedures for plea bargaining, as well as a witness protection programme under which those in danger could be given asylum outside Iraq.

“I know that I speak on behalf of all Iraqis when I say that I look forward to the day when these leaders of the former regime face justice,” Mr Allawi said.

Senior British officials told The Times this month that prosecutors are struggling to establish a conclusive legal case against Saddam because of the dictator’s habit of “power-laundering” – delegating responsibility for atrocities to junior lieutenants.

Two months after the tribunal was appointed, Mr Chalabi is the only member to have been named publicly. A US educated lawyer and the nephew of the prominent Shia politician, Ahmed Chalabi, he has received death threats and is accompanied everywhere by bodyguards.

Half of the tribunal’s £40 million budget will be spent on security.

At their arraignment tomorrow, the 12 suspects will be allowed to appoint their own lawyers, or choose to accept court-appointed defence teams. Iraqi and foreign lawyers have expressed an interest in defending Saddam, arguing that the tribunal is illegitimate, with no sound basis in international law.

“The trial will be public and fair,” Mr Allawi promised yesterday.

“It will take a long time, and it will all be in public, heard and seen by everybody. . . I ask the Iraqi people to be patient as justice takes its course.”

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