IN A defiant courtroom confession Saddam Hussein admitted yesterday ordering the trial of 148 Shias who were subsequently executed but insisted that he was acting within the law.

Addressing the evidence against him for the first time, the former dictator said the Shias from the village of Dujail were suspects in an assassination attempt against him in July 1982. “Where is the crime? Where is the crime?,” he asked.

Saddam also admitted that he ordered the destruction of the farmers’ orchards. “I razed them . . . we specified the farmland of those convicted and I signed. It’s the right of the state to re-own or compensate.”

Recalling how machineguns were fired as his motorcade drove through the village north of Baghdad, he said: “I saw the bullets with my own eyes. I was sitting on the right side.”

The prosecution alleges that the execution of the 148 villagers, including a boy of 11, was carried out after show trials. Other villagers were tortured and imprisoned for years, including entire families and even a three-month-old child.

In an unusually calm 15-minute speech at the end of the day’s proceedings Saddam went on to declare that the court should be trying him alone, and not his seven co-defendants.

“If trying a suspect accused of shooting a head of state — no matter what his name is — is considered a crime, then you have the head of state in your hands. Try him,” he said.

“If the chief figure makes things easy for you by saying he was the one responsible, then why are you going after these people?” His partial confession — the first time he has admitted any culpability since the trial began in October — came one day after prosecutors produced a 1984 presidential decree approving the death sentences.

Earlier in yesterday’s hearing prosecutors had read out documents, showed satellite images of fields laid waste and played audio tapes of conversations Saddam had with Baathist officials linking him to the executions.

He was notably more restrained than he has sometimes been in the hearings.

After the deaths of hundreds of people in sectarian violence during the last week, the former leader also took the opportunity to claim that he had united the country for war against Iran.

“Saddam didn’t win in 1988 but the Iraqi people won . . . Arab and Kurds and all other religions and sects,” he said.

The violence continued in Baghdad yesterday when more than 30 people were killed by bombs or mortars.

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