A former Kurdish guerrilla fighter accused Saddam Hussein of poisoning him with chemical weapons strikes in testimony at the ousted Iraqi leader’s genocide trial on Monday.
Karwan Abdullah Tawfiq took off dark glasses to show the swollen lids of his eyes, which he said were permanently damaged by nerve poison that had completely blinded him for six months.
”Even my children are scared to see my eyes when I remove my glasses,” said the former radio operator for Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s peshmerga guerrillas, who fled to The Netherlands and now has Dutch citizenship.
”Let the court look at my eyes,” he said, lifting his glasses. ”I want the camera to zoom in on my eyes.”
Saddam and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed — dubbed ”Chemical Ali” by Iraqis — face charges of genocide. Five other defendants, including a former defence minister, face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Tawfiq described surviving an attack on his unit’s position in March 1988. He injected himself with atropene, a nerve gas antidote, as he fled after shells struck near his tent, killing three of his comrades, he said.
”I ran towards a hill. I was running, jumping over the bodies of children, old people. I saw broken [severed] limbs. They all were bombed, killed in the bombing. I saw with my own eyes all those limbs,” he said.
He felt burning chemicals on his body, became violently sick and awoke in a hospital in Iran after months of delirium. Asked if he was conscious or not he said: ”I could say yes or no. It makes no difference … It was like I was drunk.”
Iraqi trial procedures allow defendants to address witnesses in court, and the result has been tense exchanges.
‘No longer an Iraqi’
Saddam stood up to denounce the witness for taking Dutch citizenship. ”He who holds foreign nationality would immediately lose Iraqi citizenship,” the former president told the court. ”This man is no longer Iraqi.”
He also asked whether a Dutch doctor who treated Tawfiq had ever seen ”the effects of chemical weapons used by the Americans in Vietnam”. The judge cut him off, saying the point was irrelevant and later cut off sound to the press gallery.
Chief Judge Abdullah al-Amiri caused surprise last week when he said Saddam was not a dictator. During Monday’s hearing, al-Majeed rose to object when Tawfiq described Saddam as a dictator, saying he thought that word should not be allowed.
The judge cut off his objection, saying ”this has been misinterpreted”. He did not elaborate.
More than 20 witnesses have so far taken the stand, mostly Kurdish villagers describing the destruction caused by the Anfal, or Spoils of War, campaign of 1988.
Prosecutors say more than 180 000 people died in the campaign and thousands of villages were destroyed, some gassed.
The case does not cover the most notorious use of chemical weapons, against the village of Halabja, which is to be covered by a separate trial.
Saddam is already awaiting a verdict in another case, for the deaths of Shi’ite villagers killed after a failed attempt on his life in 1982. If found guilty, he and other defendants could be hanged. — Reuters