Saddam Hussein’s Genocide Trial Resumes

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Saddam Hussein’s second trial, on charges of genocide in connection with a crackdown on Kurds, resumed Monday after a 19-day hiatus.

Saddam and six co-defendants face a possible death penalty for the killings of tens of thousands of Kurds during the Anfal campaign, a military assault in northern Iraq in the 1980s.

The offensive leveled hundreds of villages and used chemical weapons on many of them. Residents were herded into prison camps where many of the men disappeared and were executed, according to prosecutors.

Saddam is still awaiting a verdict in the first case against him – the killings of 148 Shiites in a 1980s crackdown on the town of Dujail. There too, he and seven other co-defendants could face the death penalty if convicted. The trial lasted nine months and a verdict is expected on Oct. 16.

The Anfal trial, which began in August, is likely to take months as well. The campaign was on a far greater scale than the Dujail crackdown, with anywhere from 50,000 to 180,000 Kurds killed.

In Monday’s hearing, Saddam clutched his Quran, Islam’s holy book, as the chief judge argued with one of the lawyers on technicalities pertaining to witnesses taking the stand. Saddam’s chief lawyer, Iraqi Khalil al-Dulaimi, was not present, but lawyers for the other defendants were.

Late Sunday, about 300 demonstrators in the Kifri region of northern Iraq demanded a swift trial for Saddam, and also called for trials for Kurdish military commanders who they said had worked with Saddam during the Anfal campaign.

Saddam is still awaiting a verdict in the first case against him – the killings of 148 Shiites in a 1980s crackdown on the town of Dujail. There too, he and seven other co-defendants could face the death penalty if convicted. A verdict is expected on Oct. 16.

The trial’s resumption coincided with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States and on the heels of a U.S. Senate Intelligence report that found no link between Saddam and the al-Qaida terror network.

Although Saddam’s link with al-Qaida has been debunked – along with Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction at the time of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion – the Anfal case pointed to his regime’s alleged use of poison gas against Iraqi citizens.

The Bush administration had argued that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was needed to unseat Saddam because he possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al-Qaida.

Even as recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, President Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with (deceased al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab) al-Zarqawi."