Ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein lashed out at the United States as his trial resumed on Thursday, branding the country ”liars” for dismissing charges he was tortured by his American jailers.
”The White House are liars. They said Iraq had chemical weapons. They lied again when they said I had not been beaten,” he told the court trying him on charges of crimes against humanity.
Prosecution witnesses, testifying anonymously front behind a blue screen, told of torture under Saddam’s regime, a day after the former dictator sought to turn the table on accusers by charging that his American jailers were beating and torturing him.
The White House dismissed his allegations as ”preposterous” and a US diplomat in Baghdad suggested Saddam was ”grandstanding” to deflect attention from charges of torture levelled against at least one of his seven co-accused.
Referring to himself in the third person, Saddam said: ”Zionists and the US administration hate Saddam. They said I had ties to terrorism, but later acknowledged that I did not.
”I had my injuries documented by three American [medical] teams,” he told the Iraqi high tribunal.
Saddam’s half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, the former head of the feared secret police who is among the eight on trial, also accused his jailers of torturing him.
”They asked me questions and when I asked to be able to explain things, they demanded that I reply by ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and slapped me across the face while I had handcuffs on,” he said.
It was not immediately clear if he was referring to US or Iraqi interrogators.
Barzan also repeatedly interrupted the court, protesting at one stage that much of what he was saying was being edited out of video footage of the trial that is being broadcast on televisions with a 20-minute delay.
”If the sound is cut off once again, then I don’t know about my comrades, but I personally won’t attend again; this is unjust and undemocratic,” he said.
Grandstanding
Prosecutors have accused the defendants of grandstanding in a bid to turn the trial into a political forum for their views.
A prosecutor then offered to resign, saying the presiding judge was not keeping proper order in the court and was allowing defendants to speak out of order.
Presiding Judge Rizkar Mohammed Amin rejected his resignation.
Barzan then accused the prosecutors of being former members of the Ba’ath, the ruling party under Saddam.
”This is the biggest insult there is, accusing me of belonging to the bloody Ba’ath,” one of the prosecutors answered.
Barzan then stood up, shouting: ”Long live the Ba’ath.”
This incident, too, was edited out of video footage broadcast from the courthouse.
In another courtroom incident, Amin ejected a bailiff after defendants alleged he had threatened them. It was not immediately clear who had allegedly been threatened, or in what way.
The defendants, who have pleaded not guilty, are charged with murdering 148 Shi’ite villagers, after Saddam escaped an assassination attempt in the town of Dujail in July 1982.
They face the death penalty if convicted.
Three witnesses for the prosecution testified on Wednesday when the trial resumed after a two-week adjournment called because of general elections on December 15.
Two testified anonymously from behind a blue screen, saying they had been tortured and illegally jailed in the wake of the assassination attempt when the secret police clamped down on the town, arresting hundreds of men, women and children.
A third man, Ali Mohammed Hussein al-Haydari, who testified in full view of the cameras and witnesses, described how, at age 14, he was arrested, beaten and jailed without trial before being exiled for several years to a remote desert settlement.
One of the witnesses directly implicated Barzan, saying he oversaw some of the torture sessions, in one case eating grapes as interrogators ran electricity through his body.
After spending much of the day silently listening to the witnesses and taking notes, Saddam spoke out, saying he too had been tortured by his Americans captors.
”I have been hit by the Americans and tortured,” said Saddam, who has been detained by US forces since his capture two years ago.
”Yes, I’ve been beaten on every place of my body and the signs are all over my body,” he told the court.
”We were beaten by the Americans and we were tortured, every one of us,” he said, pointing to his co-defendants.
Asked about the charge, White House spokesperson Scott McClellan told reporters: ”I think that’s one of the most preposterous things I’ve heard from Saddam Hussein recently.
”Saddam Hussein is being treated the exact opposite of the way his regime treated those he imprisoned and tortured simply for expressing their opinions.”
US State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said the allegation is ”highly ironic” given the record of Saddam’s regime, and that there is no evidence to back up his claim of having been abused.
”He’s been given to grandstanding in this trial,” McCormack said. ”But where the focus should be is on the testimony of those people who were victimised by the tyranny, the oppression and the violence of Saddam Hussein.”
An official with the US embassy in Iraq, Christopher Reid, said during an online chat on the White House internet site that Saddam ”made up the allegations and used them to ambush the judge and distract from the testimony”.
The court was expected to adjourn on Thursday until mid-January because of the announcement of Iraq’s election results, holidays and the hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. — AFP
