BAGHDAD: A furious Saddam Hussein warned he would "hunt down" his prosecutor on Monday after being accused of culpability in the alleged mass rape of Iraqi Kurdish women during a brutal crackdown on their region.
"If he says that a Iraqi woman was raped in my era and if he does not prove it, I will hunt him for the rest of my life," thundered the ousted Iraqi leader on the first day of his trial on genocide charges.
"An Iraqi woman raped in my era? The reign of Saddam Hussein? Saddam will not accept it. If I hear that during my reign this happened, and if he does not prove it, he will be my enemy. Saddam will not accept it," he declared.
Giving an example of his stance on sex crimes, Saddam said he had punished an Iraqi soldier who raped a Kuwaiti woman during his regime's 1990-1991 occupation of Kuwait.
"When we went to liberate Kuwait, one Arab woman who was not even Iraqi was raped. I set up a trial and executed that man. For three days he was hanging in public," he declared.
Saddam was reacting to the prosecution's opening arguments in their case that he and six co-defendants ordered the brutal Anfal campaign to suppress breakaway sentiment in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1988.
Iraqi forces are alleged to have killed 182,000 civilians using poison gas, artillery and air strikes and to have herded many thousands into camps where they were exposed to murder, hunger, torture and sexual assault.
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