Saddam trial hears graphic evidence of torture
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The trial of Saddam
Hussein on charges of crimes against humanity
resumed on Wednesday and heard some of the strongest
evidence yet linking the former Iraqi president and
his co-defendants to torture.
A witness told the court that Saddam's guards
applied electric shocks to detainees at the
headquarters of his feared intelligence service,
heated up plastic tubing and allowed the hot plastic
to drip on to the bodies of their victims.
"They would be in such pain as the plastic
solidified on their bodies," the witness recalled.
"A man would leave on his feet and come back thrown
in a blanket."
Saddam and seven co-defendants, including his feared
former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti,
are standing trial in connection with the killing of
148 people from the mainly Shi'ite village of Dujail
in the 1980s. |
Former dictator Saddam Hussein
Photo : AFP
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Prosecutors say Saddam ordered the killings in
reprisal for a failed bid to assassinate him in the
village in 1982.
Saddam boycotted the previous session of the trial
on December 7 after telling judges to "go to hell,"
but was back in the dock on Wednesday, listening
intently inside the caged defendants' dock at the
heavily fortified Baghdad courtroom.
At one point he asked the judge for a break in
proceedings to pray. "A note from God," Saddam said.
"The prayer time has passed. Let us pray and
continue."
When the judged refused his request, Saddam swiveled
in his black leather chair at the front of the dock,
faced the witness and rocked slightly in his seat in
apparent prayer.
STONGEST SO FAR
The testimony from the first witness was among the
strongest heard so far in the stop-start and often
chaotic trial, which started on October 19 and has
been adjourned three times. Ten prosecution witness
have already testified, many giving sometimes
rambling and imprecise accounts of hardships they
suffered under Saddam.
Eight of them testified from behind a curtain out of
fear for their lives and their names were withheld
from the court, but witness 11, who gave his name as
Ali Hassan al-Haidari, appeared openly and spoke
calmly and coherently.
Dressed in a brown suit and white shirt, he said his
brother was executed under Saddam, and recalled the
Dujail massacre, when he was just 14, and the events
of the years that followed.
He said he was taken to Saddam's Baath Party
headquarters in Dujail, where he saw the corpses of
nine people he knew, and then to the headquarters of
Saddam's infamous Mukhabarat intelligence service in
Baghdad.
He said he saw horrific torture there and, in a rare
direct accusation against Barzan, said Barzan had
been present in the building where the torture took
place and had once kicked Haidari as he lay
suffering from a fever.
"I was in pain for weeks because of that kick," he
said.
Barzan, the most outspoken of Saddam's
co-defendants, repeatedly interrupted the witness
and called him "a dog." Court officials twice opened
the gate of the defendants' dock and made as if to
remove him before he calmed down.
Haidari was the first of five witnesses expected to
testify on Wednesday. Kurdish judge Rizgar Mohammed
Amin was then expected to adjourn the trial until
mid to late January.
Reuters
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