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Saddam Genocide Trial Resumes Without Defence Team | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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An Iraqi policeman inspects the wreckage of a car bomb that exploded at a street in Tikrit (AFP)


An Iraqi policeman inspects the wreckage of a car bomb that exploded at a street in Tikrit (AFP)

An Iraqi policeman inspects the wreckage of a car bomb that exploded at a street in Tikrit (AFP)

BAGHDAD (AFP) – A Kurdish woman has accused Saddam Hussein of bulldozing her family into a mass grave as the ousted Iraqi leader returned to court for the latest hearing in his genocide trial.

The case continued Monday following a two-week adjournment, despite a boycott by Saddam’s defence lawyers, and heard more grim prosecution testimony.

The former strongman and six of his top officials are accused of ordering the 1988 Anfal campaign by Iraqi forces in which, prosecutors say, 182,000 Kurds were killed in death camps, bombings and poison gas attacks.

The Kurdish woman spoke softly from behind a curtain to protect her identity in a country still wracked by murders and political violence three-and-a-half years after Saddam’s overthrow.

Haltingly, she told of how Iraqi forces attacked her village in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region in April 1988 when she was 13 years old and rounded up members of her family, including her brother and his wife and children.

“I know what happened to my family. They were buried alive,” she told the court. The prosecutor said that her relatives’ identity cards had been found at a mass grave near Hadhar, in northern Iraq.

She told of how her community hid on Gor mountain after the arrests and that her village came under attack from Iraqi forces, who looted homes and demolished them with artillery and bulldozers.

When the survivors came down from the hills, they were rounded up and she, her mother and their neighbours were taken to Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, where the men were separated from the women, she said.

Once at Nigrat Salman prison, the women were held in humiliating conditions.

“When we were allowed to go to the bath, we used to do it in front of the soldiers because the place was surrounded by razor-wire,” she said, charging that soldiers fired over her head.

“I would like to ask Saddam a question. What was the guilt of women and children?” she demanded, her voice sometimes cracking but growing in confidence as her testimony continued.

Meanwhile, Saddam sat in the dock in his trademark dark double-breasted suit, looking uninterested, ignoring proceedings and reading the Koran.

Judge Mohammed al-Oreibi al-Khalifah halted hearings two weeks ago in order to give defendants time to arrange for lawyers, after a series of rowdy court sessions was marred by a boycott by the entire defence team.

But Saddam’s lawyers said at the weekend that they will maintain their boycott, in protest at what they said was Iraqi government interference in the case, particularly the sacking of a former chief judge.

Seven lawyers appointed by the Iraqi High Tribunal attended Monday’s session to act for the defence. Saddam has in the past refused to recognise court appointed counsel and has often been thrown out of court for being disruptive.

Saddam and one other defendant, his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, a former military commander who became notorious as “Chemical Ali”, are accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The remaining defendants are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity and all seven men in the dock face the death penalty if convicted.

On Sunday, Iraqi lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said: “We met president Saddam Hussein on October 2 and presented him a series of observations about the trial and he instructed us to boycott Monday’s hearing.”

The defence was angered by the goverment’s “blatant intervention” to replace former trial judge Abdullah al-Ameri, who was sacked after he told Saddam in open court that he did not consider him to have been a “dictator”.

Dulaimi said Khalifa, whose brother-in-law has been murdered since he took up the reins at the trial, was likely to be biased in favour of the prosecution case, a charge the court and the Iraqi government have dismissed.

As the Anfal case continues, judges are preparing to give their verdict in a previous trial against Saddam and another group of former aides alleged to have ordered the killing of 148 Shiite civilians.

The court is due to convene on October 16 to set a date for the verdict in the case — dubbed the Dujail trial after the small town north of Baghdad where the victims were seized — and Saddam could be sentenced to death.

If he is and loses an automatic appeal, judges will have to decide whether to press ahead with the Anfal trial and several other cases relating to alleged crimes during his 24 years in office, or whether to execute him right away.

An Iraqi boy looks at a stain of blood at the site where a roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi police patrol (AFP)

An Iraqi boy looks at a stain of blood at the site where a roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi police patrol (AFP)

Ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein reads the holy Koran as he listens to witness testimony (AFP)

Ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein reads the holy Koran as he listens to witness testimony (AFP)