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1st Woman Testifies Against Saddam

Posted on: Tuesday, 6 December 2005, 18:00 CST

BAGHDAD: The first woman to testify against Saddam Hussein, hidden behind a high curtain, recounted yesterday how she had been made to strip naked, beaten and given electric shocks during weeks of interrogation.

Identified only as "Witness A," she told the court how she had envied camels their freedom while she was held with hundreds of others rounded up after an attempt on Saddam's life in the village of Dujail in 1982.

She said she was moved from one prison to another over four years during Saddam's rule, and had spent a bitter winter at the Abu Ghraib jail in western Baghdad before being driven through the desert to another jail. "I saw camels and I was envious because they were free," she said.

Her voice was heavily modified through a computer to protect her identity. She wept as she told of being forced by an interrogator soon after her detention to strip in custody while five officers watched.

"From a small window, they gave us two loaves of bread," she said. "After all that torture, do you think we could eat?"

Witness A frequently referred to torture she saw inflicted on others, but was cut short by the judge who told her stick to incidents that had happened to her.

Saddam sat largely impassively through the testimony.

A second witness, an elderly woman, told the heavily fortified Baghdad court that she had been taken away by Saddam's men along with her husband, five daughters and two sons.

Source: China Daily; North American ed.

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