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Kurdish mother tells of chemical horror at
Saddam trial
23.8.2006
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BAGHDAD, August 23, 2006,-- A Kurdish mother who
lost a child to a poison gas attack on her village
nearly two decades ago cursed ousted Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein on Wednesday, the third day of his
trial for genocide.
"May God blind them all," cried 45-year-old Adiba
Owla Bayez, pointing at Saddam and six co-defendants
who are accused of masterminding the savage
1987-1988 Anfal campaign against Iraq's Kurdish
minority.
The accused appeared before a panel of judges at the
Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad, where prosecutors
began to call more witnesses to testify to the
savagery of the Iraqi military sweep through their
villages.
The former president is accused of ordering his
forces to conduct a campaign to exterminate up to
182,000 Kurdish civilians and raze around 3,000
villages in Iraq's northern hills and deserts to the
ground.
Bayez, the wife of the first Kurdish witness who
testified on Tuesday, told the court one of her
daughters had died within three months of the
chemical attack on her village, and she has since
had two miscarriages.
Her testimony about the attack on the village of
Belisand, describing how she and her family were
temporarily blinded by gas during an air raid by
Iraqi jets on April 16, 1987, closely mirrored her
husband's account.
"I was screaming because I did not want to lose my
children. I could not see them and they were also
blind. So I was screaming. It was a judgment day,"
she told the court.
She recounted how the villagers, many of them
blinded, stumbled towards higher ground to seek
shelter, pursued by fire from military helicopters.
They were tracked down by Iraqi troops and taken to
a detention centre, she said.
"I went for four days without eyesight. My children
could not see. I was just screaming. On the fifth
day I slightly opened my eyes. And it was a terrible
scene. My children and my skin had turned black,"
she said.
After several days, 29 men from the village were
separated from their families and taken away, Bayez
said, alleging that they had been "Anfalized", the
term used today in Kurdistan for those who
disappeared into mass graves.
The remaining survivors were cast loose. "Army
trucks came. We were loaded on them and dumped in
open ground near the village of Khalifan," Bayez
said.
The accused insist Anfal was a legitimate
counter-insurgency operation aimed at Iranian
infiltrators and separatist guerrillas, but
Tuesday's witnesses told the court that Iraqi
aircraft had fired chemical weapons on civilian
villages. |
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and six
members of his Baath party.
Photo : AFP| AP |
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Anfal -- named after an Arabic term in the Koran
meaning "spoils" -- was an operation directed
against Kurds living in Kurdistan (northern Iraq) in
the closing stages of Saddam's long war against
neighbouring Iran.
Two of Saddam's co-accused argued Tuesday the
campaign was justified in the context of the 1980-88
Iran-Iraq war.
"Iranians and Kurds were fighting hand in hand
against the Iraqi military," said Saber al-Duri,
Saddam's former director of military intelligence.
Court officials expect the Anfal trial to last for
around four months. Along with Saddam, six former
officials including his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid
-- the notorious "Chemical Ali" -- are facing
charges.
Saddam and Chemical Ali have been accused of
genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
They refused to enter pleas, and the court ordered
that pleas of innocent be recorded for them.
The remaining five defendants have pleaded innocent
to charges of war crimes and crimes against
humanity.
Saddam, who was overthrown in 2003 by a US-led
invasion, has already faced one trial for allegedly
ordering the deaths of 148 Shiite villagers, and
could face the death penalty. The verdict in that
case is due on October 16.
AFP
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