KUWAIT - May 31 - Lawyer For Puppet Leader Vows To Turn Case Around.

Nawwaf Al Mutairi lawyer of a Kuwaiti sentenced to death for heading a puppet government during Iraq's occupation vows to "turn around" the case against his client as he asks a court to help obtain new evidence. Al Mutairi tells the Appeals Court he needed a court order to acquire the transcript of a videotaped interview between the defendant, Alaa Hussein, and a senior government official. The lawyer says the interview, which took place in London in 1999, "contains promises to facilitate Alaa Hussein's travel to Kuwait after the government was convinced" of his innocence. (Hussein, 41, lived in Iraq, Turkey and Norway until Jan. 1999 when he returned home, saying he wanted to prove he was not a collaborator with Iraq. Iraqi forces occupied Kuwait for 7 months before a US-led coalition liberated the GCC state in Feb. 1991. Hussein was sentenced to death in absentia 2 years after the Gulf war, and a criminal court upheld the sentence on May 3.)

The former army reservist tells the court he had no idea why Iraqis chose him from hundreds of war prisoners to head the puppet Cabinet in Kuwait that served for about a week. He says that the Iraqis forced him to stay in Iraq after the war until 1997. Al Mutairi, says when Hussein was finally allowed to leave Iraq, he approached several Kuwaiti embassies seeking to facilitate his return home. He says: "They all gave him the deaf ear". Al Mutairi says the taped interview with Saad Al Ajmi, who at the time headed the government's Information Office in London, will "turn around" the case. Al Ajmi, who has since become information minister, tells the criminal court he met with Hussein to ask him about Kuwaiti war prisoners believed still in Iraq. He denies giving him any promises of pardon or clemency. (Hussein was granted asylum in Norway. They used Norwegian passports to come back to Kuwait.)

Hussein's lawyer also asks the court for the testimony of a number of former war prisoners including an army officer who saw Iraqis beating and insulting Hussein, and a member of the ruling family who was forced to insult Kuwait and its rulers in an interview with the Iraqi TV. (Hearings in the case resume on June 7.)