Technical hitch halts Saddam trial

2005-12-06 12:11

Hamza Hendawi

Baghdad - A woman whose identity will be kept secret and voice masked took the stand in the trial of Saddam Hussein on Tuesday, but the session had to be adjourned due to technical problems disguising her voice.

The witness began speaking as the fourth session of the trial got underway in the heavily guarded Green Zone, but defence lawyers complained they could not hear her scrambled voice.

Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin adjourned the session so technicians could try to fix the equipment.

For a few moments the court could hear the woman's unscrambled voice. She was sobbing as she told of having Saddam's security agents ordering her "to take off my clothes in a room".

Amin had explained to the court that defence attorneys would be told the identity of the witness but they must not pass the information to anyone outside the tribunal. He said she would be referred to publicly as "Witness A".

Witnesses have the option of not having their identities revealed as a security measure to protect them against reprisals by Saddam loyalists.

The first two witnesses - both males who took the stand on Monday - allowed their names to be announced and their pictures to be transmitted around the world.

The Tuesday hearing began after a dramatic, often chaotic day when for the first time, Shi'ite victims of a 1982 crackdown confronted the former leader and his lieutenants.

A defiant Saddam sought to take control of the proceedings through boisterous outbursts, declaring at one point that "I am not afraid of execution" and denouncing the trial run according to "American rules".

His half brother and co-defendant Barazan Ibrahim spat into the gallery and got into shouting matches.

Chilling accounts

Despite the sometimes free-for-all atmosphere on Monday, the trial's first witnesses offered chilling accounts of killings and torture.

One witness said he saw a machine that "looked like a grinder" with hair and blood on it in a secret police centre in Baghdad where he and others were tortured for 70 days. He said detainees were kept in "Hall 63".

The trial's first witness, Ahmed Hassan Mohammed, delivered a rambling, nearly two-hour account of the events in Dujail in retaliation for an armed attack on Saddam's convoy.

Mohammed recalled how security agents rounded up townspeople of all ages, from 14 to more than 70.

"There were mass arrests. Women and men. Even if a child was one-day-old, they used to tell his parents, 'Bring him with you,"' Mohammed said.

He said the agents took him and the others to the intelligence headquarters in Baghdad, where they were tortured before being transferred to Abu Ghraib prison.

Mohammed said his brother, who was 17 at the time, was tortured while his 77-year-old father watched. Interrogators threatened to rape the prisoners' daughters and sisters if the men did not sign confessions, he said.

'Go to hell'

The witness exchanged insults with Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother, telling him "you killed a 14-year-old boy".

"Go to hell," replied Ibrahim, who was intelligence chief at the time.

Mohammed, fighting back tears, described how there had been "random arrests in the streets, all the forces of the (Baath) party, and Thursday became 'Judgment Day' and Dujail has become a battle front."

But Ibrahim contested Mohammed's testimony, insisting there was no "Hall 63".

Earlier, Mohammed said he was told that Saddam 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."

The testimony drew an angry response from Saddam, who suggested that Mohammed needed psychiatric treatment.

"When the revolution of the heroic Iraq arrives, you will be held accountable," Saddam warned the chief judge.

- SAPA