Wild day in Iraq court
Witness describes Saddam’s agents torturing villagers Ousted leader remains defiant, challenges judge
BAGHDAD— The first witnesses in the Saddam Hussein trial offered chilling accounts yesterday of killings and torture using electric shocks and a grinder during a 1982 crackdown against Shiites, as the defiant expresident threatened the judge and tried to intimidate a survivor. One witness said he saw a machine that “ looked like a grinder’’ with hair and blood on it in a secret police centre in Baghdad where he and others were tortured for 70 days. But defence lawyers questioned the reliability of witnesses who were only aged 10 and 15 at the time and walked out of the tumultuous session when the judge refused to allow former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark to address the court on Saddam’s behalf. The lawyers returned after the judge relented.
Throughout the day- long session, Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin struggled to maintain order among boisterous defence outbursts. Saddam and his co- defendant and half brother, Barazan Ibrahim, gestured and shouted together, “ Long Live Iraq!’’
“ Everyone must remain calm and be civil,” the judge said repeatedly. Saddam and his seven co- defendants could be hanged if convicted on charges stemming from the deaths of more than 140 Shiites in the town of Dujail after an assassination attempt in 1982.
“ I am not afraid of execution,” Saddam proclaimed at one point.
“ Why don’t you just execute us and get rid of all of this,’’ Ibrahim shouted at the judge. The trial’s first witness, Ahmed Hassan Mohammed, delivered a rambling, nearly twohour account of events in Dujail in retaliation for an armed attack on Saddam’s convoy. Mohammed recalled how security agents rounded up townspeople of all ages — from 14 to more than 70.
“ There were mass arrests. Women and men. Even if a child was 1- day- old, they used to tell his parents, ‘Bring him with you,’ ’’ Mohammed said. He said the agents took him and the others to the intelligence headquarters in Baghdad, where they were tortured before being transferred to Abu Ghraib prison. Mohammed said his brother, who was at 17 at the time, was tortured while his 77- year- old father watched. Interrogators threatened to rape the prisoners’ daughters and sisters if the men did not sign confessions.
“ Some men just said ‘ I will sign anything but leave my sisters alone,’ ” he said. Mohammed, who was 15 at the time, said he was tortured. “ They blindfolded me, but I was so young, it kept falling.”
At the Baghdad detention centre, he saw “a machine that looked like a grinder and had some blood and hair” on it, and “ I saw bodies of people from Dujail.’’ The witness exchanged insults with Ibrahim, Saddam’s half brother, telling him “ you killed a 14- year- old boy.’’
“ To hell,” replied Ibrahim, who was intelligence chief at the time. As the testimony continued, Saddam’s lawyers objected that someone in the visitors’ gallery was making threatening gestures and should be removed. Ibrahim leapt to his feet, spat in the direction of the gallery, and shouted, “ These are criminals.’’ The judge then ordered the person in the gallery removed. The second witness, Jawad Abdul- Aziz Jawad, who was only 10 when the assassination attempt occurred, testified that Iraqi helicopters attacked the town and used bulldozers to destroy the fields and orchards. Jawad said Saddam’s regime killed three of his brothers, one before the assassination attempt and two afterward.
Saddam’s chief attorney challenged the testimony, asking how a 10-year-old could remember such details.
“ A 3- year- old child remembers a lot,” Jawad replied. “ An elementary school student does not forget if a teacher slapped him in the face. I live a catastrophe.’’ The hearing — only the third since the trial began Oct. 19 — adjourned until today.