Saddam trial told of horror in Room 63

By Michael Georgy and Paul Tait

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Men and women were tortured for days
and babies left to die in an interrogation facility which
featured a meat grinder for human flesh, the first prosecution
witness to face Saddam Hussein told the court on Monday.

After weeks of delay and legal arguments over security and
the legitimacy of the court, the trial of Saddam and seven co-
defendants on charges of crimes against humanity heard
confusing but graphic witness evidence of torture and summary
execution.

“I swear by God I walked by a room and on my left I saw a
grinder with blood coming out of it and human hair underneath,”
said 38-year-old Ahmed Hassan, who said he had been kept in
room 63 at the Hakmiya intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.

Hassan, the first witness to face Saddam in court, said he
was 15 when Saddam visited the village in July 1982 and Shi’ite
militants tried to assassinate him.

Speaking technically as an individual plaintiff alongside
the state, which is pressing charges of crimes against
humanity, Hassan said he and his family were among hundreds of
people rounded up in a security operation run by Barzan Ibrahim
al-Tikriti after an attempt on Saddam’s life in the village.

Barzan, one of Saddam’s three younger half-brothers and the
former head of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service, is
one of Saddam’s seven co-accused in the case relating to the
killings of 148 mostly Shi’ite Muslim men from Dujail.

“Barzan was present. He had red cowboy boots and blue jeans
and a sniper rifle,” Hassan, a stockily built worker with a
round face and a graying beard, told the heavily fortified
court in central Baghdad.

He said Saddam, from the Sunni Arab minority, asked a
15-year-old boy if he knew who he was. “He said ‘Saddam’. Then
Saddam hit him in the head with an ash tray,” Hassan said.

Hassan risked reprisals by letting his face appear on
television as he gave evidence.

Toward the end of his testimony he stood facing Saddam as
the former president challenged his testimony. Hassan held
Saddam’s gaze as Saddam asked how he could possibly remember
the names and birth dates of people he said were killed,
responding that he had memorized them as they were read out by
guards.

With Barzan constantly interjecting from the dock and
calling the testimony lies, Hassan said he was among hundreds
of people taken from the Shi’ite village to the Hakmiya
intelligence headquarters, run by Barzan.

He said it was while he was climbing the stairs there that
he saw the meat grinder. “No one escaped torture,” he said.

“They would put a mask on my eyes and because I was young
it would fall down. I saw women being tortured,” he said.

“My brother was given electric shocks while my 77-year-old
father watched,” Hassan said. “They told us, ‘why don’t you
confess, you will be executed anyway’,” he said.

“One man was shot in the leg with two bullets… Some
people were crippled because they had their arms and legs
broken.”

He said they were held in Hakmiya for 70 days. While they
were there a woman told a guard that her infant baby needed
milk or he would die.

“He died and the guard threw him from the window,” Hassan
told the court. “Pregnant women gave birth in the prison. Their
babies died.”

Saddam and his co-defendants have all pleaded not guilty to
the charges. They could be sentenced to death if found guilty.