Saddam trial resumes as Kurds tell tales of horror

BAGHDAD: The trial of Saddam Hussein on charges of genocide resumed on Wednesday, a day after the deposed Iraqi leader and witnesses traded accusations in a hearing marked by tales of horror recounted by Kurds.

On Tuesday, several witnesses gave more chilling accounts of how Kurds were bombed, imprisoned and buried in mass graves by Saddam's forces during the brutal 1987-88 Anfal campaign in northern Iraq.

Saddam and six other former aides, including his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed Chemical Ali, face genocide and other charges for the military campaign which prosecutors say slaughtered 182,000 Kurds.

If found guilty they face execution by hanging.

Witness Akram Ali Hussein told the court on Tuesday how his uncle's daughter was imprisoned by Saddam's forces deep in the south of the country near the Saudi border.

"She was driven mad and died after she saw her brother's body eaten by dogs who dug up a shallow grave outside the prison walls almost 20 years ago,” Ali Hussein said.

Three other witnesses also gave graphic descriptions of attacks carried out by Saddam's forces in the last years of the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-88.

Since the trial started on August 21, 13 witnesses have so far vented their fury against Saddam, who has refused to enter a plea.

By the end of the session on Tuesday, Saddam was showing obvious annoyance at the long litany of condemnations by the witnesses and attempted to put his side of the story.

He described how he negotiated an end to a Kurdish uprising in 1975, after stopping what he said was Iranian interference in Iraq's affairs.

"This means that between the Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds there were no problems," he said, however admitting that there were some tragedies and in the fight some unpleasant things happened.

Those unpleasant things took centre stage in the trial as witnesses described receiving notification by authorities in 2004 that the identity cards of their relatives who had disappeared in the Anfal had been found in a mass grave in the north.

"I wanted to go to the mass grave to see their bodies but they prevented me," said Omar Khidr Amin, a taxi driver who lost 19 relatives. “Kurdish authorities told me that it was not a good place to go," he said.

"I want to know what kind of Koran Saddam Hussein holds in his lap and how it is different from the kind in our mosques that he burned down," he said angrily before the judge silenced him.

Witness Abdel Ghafur Abdallah said he spent four months in Iran after his village was attacked and returned to a town built by the former regime to house people displaced from the Kurdish prohibited zones in the north.

He later found that his sisters and mother were killed and buried in a mass grave in Mosul. “They were Anfalized," he said, referring to the term used by the Kurds to describe those killed or missing in the campaign.

Witness Hussein related how after one bombardment, the villagers crept back to their homes to find them poisoned. 

"We saw all the trees and bushes had turned white and we knew it was a chemical attack," he said. "It was springtime and everywhere the trees were blooming except for in that place," he added.

Saddam sought to justify the crackdown on the Kurds and objected to the use of the term peshmerga to describe Kurdish guerrillas, suggesting they be called insurgents or rebels instead.

"Is there any country in the world where an insurgency breaks out and is not met by the army?" Saddam asked the chief judge of his trial.