I just read that Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, has joined Saddam's legal defense team.

On the eve of the hearing, Clark and former al-Nueimi flew to the capital from Amman, Jordan, to lend weight to the defense team. Both have been advising Saddam's lawyers and support their call to have the trial moved out of Iraq because of the violence.

Clark, who served as attorney general under President Johnson, wrote last month that Saddam's rights had been systematically violated since his December 2003 capture, including his right 'to a lawyer of his own choosing.'

William Ramsey Clark (born December 18, 1927) is a lawyer and peace activist best known for his work in the U.S. Department of Justice, which included service as the 66th United States Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He is a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award and the son of another Attorney General and Justice of the Supreme Court, Tom C. Clark.

As Attorney General during some of the Vietnam War, Clark oversaw the prosecution of the Boston Five for 'conspiracy to aid and abet draft resistance.' Four of the five were convicted, including fellow winner of the Gandhi Peace Award pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock and Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. (who would later officiate at the wedding of Clark's son). Clark believed since Coffin and Dr. Spock were respected, if controversial, public figures who could afford legal counsel to fight back for them, their cases would take a long time and would 'focus attention on the problems of the draft.' Clark says that he hoped to show Johnson that opposition to the war wasn't limited to "draft-dodging longhairs" but included the most admired pediatrician in America, a prominent and revered patrician minister, and a respected former Kennedy Administration official (Marcus Raskin, who had been a special staff member on the National Security Council).

Activism
Following his term he worked as a law professor and was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement. He visited North Vietnam in 1972. In 1974 he was the Democratic Party's candidate for the United States Senate from New York, losing to Jacob Javits.

More recently, Clark has become notorious for his outspoken political views. He has also provided legal counsel and advice to controversial figures in conflict with Western governments, including:

NORML Advisory Board during late 1970s and early 1980s
Branch Davidian leader David Koresh
Antiwar activist Father Philip Berrigan
American Indian prisoner Leonard Peltier
Crimes of America conference in Teheran in 1980
Liberian political figure Charles Taylor during his 1985 fight against extradition from the United States to Liberia
Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a leader of the Rwandan genocide
PLO leaders in a lawsuit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the wheelchair bound elderly tourist who was shot and tossed overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists in 1986
Camilo Mejia, a US soldier who deserted his post claiming he did not want any part of an "oil-driven war"
Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Yugoslavia and accused war criminal
Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq and accused war criminal
In December 2004, Clark went to Iraq to try to join the legal team defending Saddam Hussein before the Iraqi Special Tribunal, and now acts as an advisor to Hussein's legal team. Clark returned to Iraq in late November 2005 to assist and draw publicity for Hussein's defense and the anti-war movement.

Clark is affiliated with VoteToImpeach, an organization advocating the impeachment of President George W. Bush. He has been an opponent of both Gulf Wars. He is the founder of the International Action Center, which has much overlapping membership with the Workers' World Party. Clark and the IAC helped found the protest organization ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism).