TV revives bloody past as Iraq awaits Saddam trial

By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A man describes how Saddam Hussein’s
secret police shoved a dissident’s baby into a sack with a
vicious cat that scratches it. Undercover agents throw a man to
his death from the roof of a building.

Iraqiya state television is reviving images of life under
Saddam as a court prepares to announce his trial date.

“I wish they were here to see the day when Saddam is
finished,” a tearful woman who lost her relatives under Saddam
told the television program, which broadcast footage of abuses
filmed by the same former security forces who committed them.

Officials in Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government, some of his
most hated opponents, want a speedy death sentence for Saddam,
ousted by a U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

But that could undermine the credibility of the special
tribunal that laid down the first charges against him this week
and raise questions about justice in a new Iraq projecting
itself as the first true democracy in the Arab world.

In a country where some of Saddam’s old secret police are
leading an insurgency that has killed thousands, Iraqiya
focused on grisly images from the past.

Grainy footage of senior officials, including Ali Hassan
al-Majid — nicknamed Chemical Ali because his men allegedly
gassed 5,000 Kurds in 1988 — shows them questioning Shi’ites
after a failed rebellion in 1991.

One official calmly smokes a cigarette and then kicks one
of them in the face. The bound men were later executed.

BLINDFOLDS AND ROOFTOPS

In another reminder of nearly a quarter of a century of
Saddam, a blindfolded man with his hands bound behind his back
is pushed off the roof of a building.

In another scene captured on video, a man is being held on
the ground with his arm extended, while his arm is beaten with
a club until the bone breaks.

The show about crimes under Saddam follows a propaganda
series about fighters confessing to everything from murder to
homosexuality, a crime in Iraq. That show has been hugely
popular even though some think the confessions are forced.

In a chilling scene, Saddam’s men pump bullets into the
heads of men tied to poles. “That one is still breathing,” says
an officer in the footage. Another bullet is fired.

Saddam says the court has no legitimacy and has appeared
confident and defiant during televised questioning.

One man in the Iraqiya show described how Saddam’s agents
put a dissident’s baby in a sack with a cat. “Enough, enough. I
am a member of the (banned) Da’awa Party,” he confessed.

In another case, an elderly woman held up a picture chart
of her extended family, all allegedly killed. “This is a
picture of Muhammad,” she said softly of one of them.

It’s a story repeated many times since Saddam fell and
Iraqis rushed to investigate the fate of loved ones, uncovering
mass graves and rifling through government documents.

Viewers disturbed by the Iraqiya program were reminded of
the tragedies of today during an urgent news break. A man
strapped with explosives blew himself up among a group of Iraqi
army recruits in Baghdad.

The attack killed six people, minor by Baghdad standards.
Iraqiya then broadcast pleasant scenes of waterfalls and
farmers in lush fields, a peaceful life that few Iraqis expect
soon.