Kurd accuses Saddam in court of poison gas attacks

By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – An Iraqi Kurd told Saddam Hussein’s
genocide trial on Tuesday how jets dropped poison gas smelling
of rotten apples on his mountain village and aides to the
ousted leader defended his campaign against Kurdish rebels.

Taking the stand in Baghdad on the second day of the second
capital trial the former president has faced, first witness Ali
Mustafa Hama said: “Birds were returning to their nests. I saw
eight to 12 jets patrolling the sky. There was greenish smoke
from the bombs. There was a smell of rotten apple or garlic.

“People were vomiting … We were blinded. We were
screaming. There was no one to save us, only God.”

Two of Saddam’s former military commanders, among six
fellow defendants charged with war crimes, had earlier been
allowed to make brief statements in their defense, in which
they portrayed the 1988 Anfal — Spoils of War — campaign as a
legitimate response to Iraqi Kurds fighting alongside Iran
against Baghdad.

“The Iranians and Kurds were fighting hand in hand against
the Iraqi forces,” former military intelligence chief Sabir al-
Douri told the court. “Iran wanted to break through,” he added,
recalling Saddam’s 1980-88 war against the Islamic Republic.

“No commander could fail to respond,” said Sultan Hashim,
the commander of Task Force Anfal and later defense minister.

Saddam and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, are charged
with genocide over the seven-month campaign. Majid earned his
nickname “Chemical Ali” after poison gas attacks in the north.

Hama, one of several witnesses to be presented by the
prosecution to lodge a formal complaint against the defendants,
spoke of events nearly a year before the formal launch of the
Anfal campaign in the Balisan valley, north of Sulaimaniya.

DIED AT BIRTH

Speaking in Kurdish and wearing the traditional headdress
of his mountain people, Hama, who is in his early 50s, recalled
April 16, 1987: “There were two women. One of them was
pregnant. When she gave birth, the little infant was trying to
see the world. He breathed in all the chemicals and he died.”

Unlike many witnesses in Saddam’s first trial, for crimes
against humanity over the killing of 148 Shi’ite men from
Dujail, Hama did not try to conceal his identity from the man
who ruled Iraq through fear for three decades. The curtain on
the witness stand remained open and his voice was not
distorted.

On Monday’s opening day of the trial, at least one defense
lawyer spoke through a distorting microphone and did not appear
on television. Three defense counsel in the Dujail trial have
been killed, prompting critics to say a fair trial is
impossible amid the sectarian and ethnic bloodshed ravaging
Iraq.

Some of Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arab minority accuse the
newly empowered Shi’ite Muslim majority and their Kurdish
allies in government of persecuting them.

On Monday, Saddam refused to plead and called the court a
tool of the U.S. occupation. The Shi’ite judge entered a not
guilty plea on his behalf.

Trying to prove the campaign amounted to genocide of Iraq’s
Kurdish minority, prosecutors said villages had been razed in
aerial and artillery bombardments, including poison gas
attacks, and villagers forced into camps and shot, tortured or
raped.

A verdict in the Dujail trial is expected in October.

The 69-year-old former leader faces the death penalty in
both cases, but the scheduling of a dozen other trials could
delay any execution for years, raising the possibility that
like former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam may die
in jail.