Saddam Hussein, who was declared a prisoner of war by the US Defence Department, could stand trial in Iraq by June, an Iraqi Governing Council member said. The US Defense Department named Saddam a prisoner of war after much legal internal strife, nearly a month after the he was discovered hiding in a small hole on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was informed Friday that Pentagon lawyers concluded that Saddam met the definition of an enemy prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention, Pentagon spokesman said. Saddam would most likely be tried for the 1988 gassing of some 5,000 Kurds in Halabja, as well as the mass expulsion of Kurds from their homes during his 24-year rule. He would also face charges over the persecution of the Shiite Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as for war crimes against Iran and Kuwait.

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