May 2003: Amnesty International warns Britain about the poor treatment of prisoners at British bases in Iraq. And two more US Marines were killed in western Iraq; 10 have died in the past three days.The attacks show that the capture of Fallujah last month has not quelled the insurgency, with 40 US soldiers killed in the first two weeks of December.The US is raising the number of its troops in Iraq from 138,000 to 150,000, ostensibly for the election. The US has paid the special tribunal’s £40m budget.The country’s chronic insecurity was underlined yesterday when a suicide bomber struck for the second day running at the same entrance to the Green Zone which houses the US embassy and the Iraqi interim government The early-morning explosion killed seven people. A trial now would have to rely on US protection and could easily be portrayed by Baathists as being orchestrated by foreign occupiers and their dupes. But other members of the government said little preparatory work had been done for court proceedings. Saddam Hussein is unlikely to face trial until much later.
Mr Allawi told the Interim National Council: “I can tell you clearly and precisely that, God willing, next week the trials of the symbols of the former regime will start, one by one so justice can take its course in Iraq.”The unexpected announcement may be part of Mr Allawi’s election campaign for the poll on 30 January. Salem Chalabi, the former director of the special tribunal in charge of the trials who was purged in September, accused Mr Allawi of pushing for show trials before the election.An ill-prepared trial could backfire Government leaders say evidence has yet to be examined.

“The prosecution team, the defence counsel, the investigative judges, the documents are not ready,” the national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said last week “It will take time. The defence had contended that Pelosi had been 40 miles away when the murder took place. They intimated that Mr Ammon had hours before had a tryst on a local gay beach and a male lover might have murdered him They also suggested his wife could have been the killer.. War crimes trials against senior lieutenants of Saddam Hussein will start in Baghdad next week, the interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said yesterday. I killed her husband and she won’t give me a few hundred thousand dollars.”Pelosi, who had installed a security system at the East Hampton mansion where the murder took place, closed his eyes and sank into his seat when the verdict was read.Gerald Shargel, his lawyer, said his client had been convinced he would cleared.

Pelosi received $2m in a post-nuptial agreement.On the stand last month, Ms Mayne said that Pelosi, from Long Island, had confronted her one day and bragged “about how he had beaten and beaten him and how Ted had begged for his life” She said: “It was just horrendous and I was very scared. Ms Ammon died last year from cancer and left $1m to the nanny as well as her own Hampton house, on condition that she took charge of raising the children. When the jury came back with the verdict after 24 hours, even Pelosi’s mother was unable to get a seat in court.Mr Ammon, 52, a socialite who was chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Centre and had homes in Manhattan, East Hampton and England, was murdered early on 21 October 2001. A former mistress made the same contention.Prosecutors said after the verdict that it was probably a last-minute decision by Pelosi, 41, to take the stand in his own defence that finally sank him. Janet Albertson, an assistant district attorney, said: “He came across like he was – an anti-social criminal personality who takes no responsibility.”Laced with the ingredients of an airport novel – greed, violence, doomed romance, social climbing and betrayal – the trial drew intense public scrutiny from the day it opened in October. He was in the midst of a bitter divorce from Generosa Ammon, from whom he was estranged.Prosecutors described how Pelosi, who was romantically involved with Ms Ammon, had killed the banker to gain access to a fortune of about $46m (£23m). Soon after his death, Pelosi and Ms Ammon married and fled to England.