Note To My Successor

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A second cloud over the ministry has formed from various accounts that police vehicles were used in the killings of lawyers defending Saddam Hussein's lieutenants in the current trial. Two eyewitnesses who told friends they saw Ministry of Interior vehicles take lawyer Saadoun al-Janabi from his office on Oct. 20 before he was discovered dead have themselves been killed. (One witness was shot just last week while taking his pregnant wife to a Baghdad hospital; TIME had been trying to reach him to have him relate what he saw.) "All fingers point to the Ministry of Interior," insists Saddam's personal lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi, "its militias and Iranian intelligence." While al-Jaafari conceded that a corrupt Interior official could have been bribed to carry out the killings, he says the likely culprits are ex-Baathists and "those who want to disrupt the political process." An ex-Baathist field commander says his group wouldn't target Saddam's attorneys. "These people are doing their duty defending any accused," says the leader of the insurgent al-Tamimi brigade of Jaish Mohammed.

The Iraqi Bar Association is convinced that the police are not doing enough to investigate the crimes and has ordered the Saddam defense team to cut off contact with the court until the killers of the lawyers are found, a decision that could further delay the tribunal when it reconvenes on Nov. 28. Procedures would require the court to appoint new counsel, causing another 40-day stay for the difficult discovery process (see following story).

During the course of his nine-month term, al-Jaafari, by his own admission, has acted less like a strong-arming leader and more a playground monitor. Still, he is proud of negotiating to get more representatives of the large Sunni minority, which dominated Iraqi politics under Saddam, into the Cabinet. Al-Jaafari also pushed to bring in Sunnis to help write the constitution. While al-Jaafari stops short of welcoming Baathists back into the government, his actions, say Western diplomats, have brought Sunni politicians into the fold and may reap benefits including broader participation in the Dec. 15 elections. But each step, al-Jaafari says, is a huge exercise.

He is almost plaintive as he pleads for patience with Iraq's fledgling democracy. Last week he showed off a gift he received from President George W. Bush, a gold-foil-covered box containing a worn, leather-bound 19th century copy of the Federalist papers. Al-Jaafari has read the book in translation and cites the extensive debates over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution as a reason that the Iraqi democracy should not be rushed. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited on Nov. 11, he told her he didn't want to have to "start at the beginning, but we can't start at the end."