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Graphic Saddam video shown
19/12/2006 16:10 - (SA)
Baghdad - Graphic video footage of villagers fleeing and lying dead from what prosecutors called a chemical attack against Kurdish civilians was shown at Saddam Hussein's genocide trial on Tuesday.
The grainy video, shot over various days in April 1987 and May 1988, showed helicopters flying low over the mountains; villagers frantically fleeing in trucks; refugees on foot, white smoke and women gathered near tents, crying.
"Where are the terrorists they wanted to kill?" said the prosecutor at one point, pointing at the video and referring to people he said were targeted by the Saddam's former regime.
Footage showed civilian corpses lying rigid on fields and the stiff body of a dead baby, mouth open, being lifted onto a truck by survivors.
"These were different shots of what was called 'population centres' of the victims of chemical bombing," the chief prosecutor told the court, without naming the villages or saying from where the videos originated.
"These were only small samples and more will be shown later," he added.
The prosecution also presented a top secret memo and another document that claimed a Dutch man, Frans Van Anraat, who apparently managed to escape from CIA arrest, provided the Saddam regime with chemical weapons.
The man "provided great services to the country by providing the country's institutions and the military industry with chemical and rare materials," and he was rewarded with Iraqi ID and a passport, the memo said.
'Top secret and confidential'
One of the documents, from the security department of Saddam's office, is classified as "top secret and confidential" and dated April 20, 1992.
Prosecutors also produced what they said was a top secret memo drawn up by top generals and addressed to the defence ministry in April 1988, charging that two attacks had been carried out by "special ammunition".
"To carry out the orders of the military deputy commander, two attacks were conducted by the special ammunition," read the prosecutor from the memo.
He said the subject of the communique was "the intentions of enemy in the Chwarta and Dukan areas" - both regions in northern Iraq.
The court convened inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone with Saddam and his six co-defendants in the dock for the second consecutive day to listen to documentary evidence about the use of "special ammunition".
The defendants are accused of killing 182 000 Kurds in the late 1980s when government troops allegedly suppressed a Kurdish uprising by using artillery, air strikes, death camps and poison gas attacks.
They insist that the 1988 Anfal campaign was a legitimate counter-insurgency operation against Kurdish separatists at a time when Iraq was at war with Iran.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of the ousted Iraqi president who with Saddam are the only two charged with genocide, asked the judge to give the defendants four hours to discuss documents to be shown to the court.
The judge said the court would consider the session as exceptional, give them the documents for this session, discuss them and submit them with the documents for the next session at the end of Tuesday's proceedings.
- AFP
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