The genocide trial of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein resumed yesterday with more harrowing witness testimony about the military campaign that killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds in the 1980s.
"The fighting started in the village of Qaram Pasha and lasted for three days," Rauf Faraj Abdallah, a middle-aged Kurd in traditional dress, told the court. "Out of fear, we fled towards the mountains as our village was being bombed with chemical weapons."
Saddam and six of his former associates are on trial for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
accused
They are accused of leading the campaign from 1987 to 1988 in Iraq's northern Kurdish region, which prosecutors say killed 182,000 Kurds after their villages were bombed, burned and razed to the ground.
They face execution by hanging if found guilty.
The onset of the trial has been dominated by witnesses' testimony about Saddam's brutal campaign, which the former regime claims was a counter-insurgency operation against rebellious Kurds.
The previous hearing's testimony was dominated by a former Kurdish guerrilla who described a village being attacked from the air by chemical weapons, killing people and leaving him temporarily blind.
"I spent six months in the hospital, and in all that time I was unable to see," said Karwan Abdallah Tawfiq, describing how he later was able to gain asylum and medical treatment in the Netherlands.
`scared'
"Even my children are scared to see my eyes when I remove the glasses. My eyes are scary," he told the court, taking off his sunglasses to reveal heavily bloodshot eyes.
During cross-examination, Saddam belittled the victim's wounds, inquiring if they compared to the weapons used by the US in the war in Vietnam.
"I would like to ask this man, did he see the results of the chemical weapons used by the Americans in Vietnam?" he asked.
Defense lawyers called into question the witness's testimony when it was revealed that he had escaped to Europe under an assumed name.
"All the details have been faked by him. How are we going to rely on his testimony?" defense lawyer Badie Arif asked.
falsified name
After the hearing, Arif said he planned to sue the prosecutor for presenting a witness who had falsified his name and fled the regime.
The trial turned controversial last week after friendly exchanges between the Shiite chief judge Abdullah al-Ameri and Saddam, with the prosecutor and some Kurdish and Shiite groups demanding the judge's resignation.
During an exchange on Thursday, Ameri said to Saddam: "You were not a dictator," and suggested it was those close to him who made him look like one.
Saddam thanked the judge.
Iraq's Kurds are still nursing their wounds from the military campaign, while Shiites are awaiting the Oct. 16 verdict in Saddam's first trial on charges that he was responsible for killing 148 Shiites from the village of Dujail after an attempt on his life there in 1982.
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