BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – One of Saddam Hussein’s main lawyers was shot to death Wednesday after he was abducted from his Baghdad home by men wearing police uniforms, the third killing of a member of the former leader’s defense team since the trial started some eight months ago.

North of Baghdad, gunmen seized about 85 workers as they left an industrial plant, police and a witness said.

Witnesses said gunmen forced the workers into a bus and a minivan near the parking lot of the al-Nasr General Complex in Taji, a predominantly Sunni Arab area 12 miles north of Baghdad, police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said. The workers were thought to be mostly Shiite.

In the latest incident to roil the Saddam trial, lawyer Khamis al-Obeidi, who represented the former leader and his half brother Barzan Ibrahim, was abducted from his house in the morning, said Khalil al-Dulaimi, Saddam’s chief attorney. Al-Obeidi’s body was found on a street near the Shiite slum of Sadr City, Mahmoud said.

Al-Dulaimi blamed the Interior Ministry, which Sunnis have alleged is infiltrated by so-called Shiite death squads, for the killing.

“We strongly condemn this act and we condemn the killings done by the Interior Ministry forces against Iraqis,” he said.

The Interior Ministry had no comment on the claim.

A photo of al-Obeidi provided by police showed his face, head and shoulders drenched in blood. Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi did not provide any details of the killing.

“We will defy terrorism,” al-Moussawi told The Associated Press. “We will continue with the trial and will not be deterred,” he said, noting that members of the defense team had turned down an offer to live with their families in Baghdad’s heavily protected Green Zone, home to the Iraqi government, parliament and the U.S. Embassy.

A parked car bomb exploded near an ice cream shop in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, killing at least three people and wounding eight, police Capt. Sattar Jabar said. It was the second attack in as many days in the sprawling Shiite district in eastern Baghdad.

The violence came a day after the U.S. military recovered the bodies of two missing soldiers from an area south of Baghdad that it said was rigged with explosives. A senior Iraqi defense official, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed, said the bodies showed signs of torture.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of five insurgent groups, claimed the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq executed the men personally, but it offered no evidence. The U.S. military did not confirm whether the soldiers died from wounds suffered in an attack Friday or were kidnapped and later killed.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council also said in an Internet statement Wednesday that it has decided to kill four kidnapped Russian Embassy workers.

The statement’s authenticity could not be determined. It did not offer evidence that the group was holding the Russians or say whether they had been killed.

The group said Moscow had not met demands to fully withdraw its troops from the war-torn region of Chechnya. The four embassy workers were abducted June 3 in an attack on their car that killed a fifth Russian.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin called on the kidnappers to spare the lives of the captives.

“We once again strongly urge not to take an irreparable step and preserve the lives of our people,” Kamynin said in a statement.

Al-Obeidi, who was in his 50s and had six children, was the third member of Saddam’s defense team to be killed since the former leader’s trial began Oct. 19.

A dozen masked gunmen abducted defense lawyer Saadoun al-Janabi from his Baghdad office the day after the trial’s opening session. His body was found the next day with two bullets in his skull. Nearly three weeks later, defense lawyer Adel al-Zubeidi was assassinated in a brazen daylight ambush in Baghdad. A colleague who was wounded fled the country.

“The aim of this act is to terrify the lawyers and hinder the work of the defense team,” al-Dulaimi said.

Saddam and his seven co-defendants are charged with crimes against humanity for a crackdown after a shooting attack on Saddam’s motorcade as he visited the town of Dujail in 1982. They allegedly arrested hundreds of Shiites, including women and children, tortured some to death and killed 148 in all.

The prosecution presented its final arguments Monday, demanding the death penalty for the former Iraqi leader. After a three-week recess, the defense gets to sum up its case, then a panel of judges will begin deliberating.

Unlike al-Dulaimi, who shuttles between Amman, Jordan, and the Iraqi capital, al-Obeidi chose to continue living in Baghdad during the trial despite the tenuous security. He lived in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah in northern Baghdad.

Bushra al-Khalil, a Lebanese member of the defense team, also said al-Obeidi was taken from his house by men dressed in police uniforms and driving four vehicles used by Iraqi security forces.

“They blindfolded him and took him away,” said al-Khalil, who was thrown out of the courtroom last month by chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman. “No one can go out during curfew time in Baghdad.”

She said the Americans bore responsibility for al-Obeidi’s death because they decided to stop providing protection for defense lawyers. The U.S. has denied this.

“Lifting the security of the defense team was an introduction to assassinations,” al-Khalil told the AP.

She said that for the first time since the trial began she received a threat by telephone Monday night.

“A man cursed me and threatened me before hanging up,” she said, adding that he was using a Lebanese public telephone.

Mohammed Moneib, an Egyptian lawyer for Saddam and co-defendant Taha Yassin Ramadan, said Abdel-Rahman was also partly responsible for al-Obeidi’s death because of the way he deals with defense attorneys. After an angry exchange during a hearing last week, Abdel-Rahman, a Kurd, accused Moneib of seeking to create “chaos” in the courtroom.

“His accusations are a sort of incitement,” Moneib said from Cairo. “The way he deals with the defense, defendants and witnesses could incite madmen or criminals to commit such crimes.”

Moneib demanded that al-Moussawi, the chief prosecutor, personally investigate al-Obeidi’s death.