BAGHDAD, November 27, -- Saddam Hussein's trial
on genocide charges resumes in Baghdad Monday with
more Kurdish witnesses testifying one week after a
human rights watchdog highlighted what it called
fundamental flaws in the deposed Iraqi president's
first trial.
Lawyers for Saddam and six co-defendants are
expected to present their witness list during the
23rd hearing of a trial that began on August 21 and
was temporarily adjourned on November 8.
The seven men are accused of responsibility for the
deaths of 182,000 Kurds during the so-called Anfal
campaign, when government troops swept through Iraqi
Kurdistan in 1988, burning and bombing thousands of
villages.
Saddam and his former aides argue that it was a
legitimate counter-insurgency operation against
Kurdish
separatists at a time when the country was at war
with its neighbour Iran.
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Former dictator Saddam Hussein
Photo : AFP |
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The accused -- including Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan
al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" -- all face the
death penalty if convicted. Saddam and Majid are the
only defendants facing a charge of genocide,
however.
A US official close to the court said the resumption
of the trial will see more Kurdish witnesses
testifying, and they will be followed by expert
witnesses.
Dozens of Kurdish villagers and former guerrillas
have already testified, giving horrifying accounts
of atrocities allegedly committed by Iraqi forces
against men, women and children during the Anfal
campaign.
The witnesses described the detention of civilians,
the rape of women prisoners and villages being
bombed with chemical weapons.
Defence lawyers have boycotted the trial but are
still expected to present their list of witnesses
after chief judge Mohammed al-Oraibi al-Khalifah
ordered them to do so in the previous session.
On November 30 the New York-based Human Rights
Watch, which is tracking Saddam's trials, described
as fundamentally flawed the deposed dictator's
previous trial in which he was sentenced to death.
In that trial, the former president and seven others
were accused of killing 148 Shiites from the village
of Dujail in the 1980s after Saddam escaped an
assassination bid there in 1982.
"The trial... was marred by so many procedural and
substantive flaws that the verdict is unsound," it
said in a statement released along with the 97-page
report.
"The proceedings in the Dujail trial were
fundamentally unfair," said Nehal Bhuta, author of
the report.
On November 5 the chief judge in the first trial,
Rauf Rashid Abdel Rahman, sentenced Saddam and two
others to death by hanging.
"The tribunal squandered an important opportunity to
deliver credible justice to the people of Iraq. And
its imposition of the death penalty after an unfair
trial is indefensible," Bhuta said in his report.
The HRW report was based on observations during the
trial and on dozens of interviews with judges,
prosecutors and defence lawyers.
But Iraqi officials dismissed the rights watchdog's
report as a "Western way of thinking".
"An Iraqi court found him guilty and for us it was a
day of festivity when the judge delivered the death
verdict on Saddam," a top official close to the
trial told AFP.
The Dujail verdicts are now with an appellate
chamber, whose final word will come within an
unspecified time. If it upholds the trial court's
ruling, Iraqi law stipulates that Saddam must be
executed within 30 days of that decision.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has already said
Saddam may be hanged before the end of this year.
AFP
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