And the Left wants to go back to the days of Saddam

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Saddam witness describes brutality

By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 6, 2005

BAGHDAD -- A survivor of a massacre broke into tears in front of an impassive Saddam Hussein yesterday while describing the brutal killings of men, women and children in the Shi'ite village of Dujail in 1982.
Ahmed Hassan Mohammed was the first witness to testify in the murder and torture case against Saddam, highlighting an emotional day in which the former dictator repeatedly yelled at the judge and the defense team briefly walked out in protest over the proceedings.
"I am not afraid of execution," said the defiant ex-president, after suggesting that Mr. Mohammed needed psychiatric help.
Security was tight after reports Sunday that terrorists planned to hit the courthouse with rocket fire. Police and U.S. and Iraqi troops closed down several major highways and set up checkpoints in city streets.
Mr. Mohammed was 15 when hundreds of families from his village were tortured and killed after an assassination attempt against Saddam. The witness said his family was among the hundreds taken to a Baghdad jail.
"I swear by God, I walked by a room and ... saw a grinder with blood coming out of it and human hair underneath," said Mr. Mohammed, who allowed his face to be shown on camera despite the risk of retaliation by Saddam's supporters.
"My brother was a student in high school, and they took him and my father to be interrogated. They tortured him with electric shocks in front of my 77-year-old father," said a sobbing Mr. Mohammed.
"Some were crippled because they had arms and legs broken," he added.
Seated just feet away in a small fenced-off area, Saddam smirked or stared through much of the testimony, while his co-defendant and half brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti repeatedly yelled: "It's a lie."
Saddam tried at various times to interrupt the proceedings, at one point standing up and shouting, "Long live Iraq." He repeatedly demanded the right to speak, and Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin had to wrest back control of the courtroom.
Iraqis are divided about the trial, with many questioning the legitimacy of the court but others pleased to see the former strongman finally facing justice.
"Saddam deserves what is happening to him now, because he did worse," said Sarah, a 20-year-old student in large sunglasses.

"Look what he did to his people. ... He kept everything good for his own family," she said, frowning in the midday sun. "They should give him to the Iraqi people to pay the penalty."
Her companion Sammar, 18, disagreed. "There is no justice in this court," she said, as gunfire rattled overhead. "It is difficult to see our president in this situation. He is still an Iraqi national."
Iraqi television prefaced the trial coverage with film clips dating from Saddam's rule that showed men getting their tongues sliced off and a young man having his arms repeatedly broken before his hands were cut off.
Two friends -- a Sunni and a Shi'ite -- who watched the broadcast in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood looked away in disgust, even though they disagreed about the legitimacy of the court.
"He killed my uncle in 1980, but I think Saddam Hussein in a cage like that, in front of everyone, is an insult to the Iraqis," said Falah, 42, who, like the others, declined to give his last name. "It would be better if he were tried abroad."
The trial opened just as the Muslim call to prayer floated over the city. It soon dissolved into disorder as the attorneys for Saddam and the seven co-defendants challenged the legitimacy of the court.
Witnesses called to address the issue included a former justice minister from Qatar and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who then led the defense team in walking out of the courtroom in protest.
Time stretched out as the defendants and judges discussed the situation, and finally the attorneys trooped back in to resume the trial.

 

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SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq -- The question on people's minds in Iraq's largest Kurdish city as they watch Saddam Hussein's trial on television is not whether he should be executed, but how and when.
Some argue that the ousted leader should be convicted and put to death immediately after the trial, which is being broadcast live on Kurdish television.
Others want to see a series of trials, in which Saddam is held to account for a long-term campaign that displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds, and for four poison-gas attacks that killed several thousand others.
"Don't rush it; let it take years," Hero Talabani, the wife of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, told foreign reporters. Mrs. Talabani is the founder of a satellite television station that has been covering the trial.
"Let it be an example to Middle East leaders what can happen to murderous dictators," she said. "If Saddam dies soon, the full horror will not emerge and people will forget quickly."
A small part of Saddam's bloody legacy is on display in a nondescript annex to the former regime's four-story General Security Service offices in the center of Sulaimaniyah. The one-time prison, shut down when the Kurds achieved a measure of independence under U.S. protection in 1991, now serves as a museum.
Among the visitors this week were two teenage boys who contemplated exhibits such as electrodes used in torture sessions and a macabre noose brought from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
"Whatever Saddam did to the Iraqi people, let him get the same. In front of me. Then hang him," said 14-year-old Hunar Ghareeb, who said his uncle and cousin were killed by the regime.
He and his friend Ali, also 14, stood in a cell reading the desperate messages that prisoners had scratched on the walls. One such etching said: "I'm 10 years old but they claim I'm 17. Mummy and Daddy, the Ba'athists are going to kill me and I'll never see you again."
A museum guide who identified himself only as Halkaw said that as many as 40 women had been held in a single cell, where they were raped repeatedly in front of other prisoners, including their husbands or brothers, to pressure them to "confess."
"For Saddam, execution is too little, too little," said another visitor to the torture cells, Ahmed Hassan, a 32-year-old geologist for a local oil company. "People will feel happy when he's dead."
Faroukh Sabir Ahmed, 38, a former political prisoner who now sells cooked brown beans on a sidewalk, had perhaps the most imaginative idea for Saddam's punishment.
"My suggestion is they bring Saddam here in front of all the mothers whose children he's killed, and let the mothers cut off sections of his flesh, bit by bit. They can kill him thousands of times."
A few think Saddam should be left alive to see what Iraq is becoming without him.
"I'm against execution," said Sherko Manguri, deputy editor of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's daily newspaper. "Let the dictator see his people experiencing freedom and democracy -- free at last from his rule. Every day is for him a kind of living death."
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