A former Iraqi lawmaker gave chilling testimony of torture and beatings at the trial on Wednesday of 15 aides of executed dictator Saddam Hussein, including the notorious ”Chemical Ali”, who are accused of crimes against humanity.
Kamil Kanoun Abu al-Heil (76) said he had in March 1991, during a Shi’ite Muslim uprising against Saddam’s Sunni-led regime, been detained at a Baghdad prison where hundreds of others were brought daily to be ”beaten and tortured”.
Abu al-Heil, a Shi’ite who served as a legislator during Saddam’s rule, said he was arrested when he had come to Baghdad to attend a parliamentary session. He was detained in the al-Radhwaniyah Prison near the Iraqi capital.
”When I entered a room in the prison a man who looked like Hercules in the movies came and asked me my identity. Then he hit me on the head and I fell down,” Abu al-Heil said from the witness box.
He said Iraqi soldiers used to bring hundreds of people to the jail daily.
”I heard screams of pain as prisoners were beaten and tortured. At the end of the day, I could see people being carried out on blankets soaked with blood. They could not walk because of the harsh torture,” Abu al-Heil said.
Uprising
The chief prosecutor, whose name may not be revealed for security reasons, asked him if he had participated in the uprising.
”I was a member of the National Council [Parliament]. I was part of the regime. No way I could participate in the uprising,” Abu al-Heil told the court.
He was later released after a presidential pardon, he said. ”But my life was destroyed. I was dismissed from Parliament. My cotton factory and my house were destroyed by the shelling from the army.”
Abu al-Heil was the third witness to testify against the 15 defendants, who are accused of ruthlessly crushing the Shi’ite rebellion in southern Iraq by demolishing homes and killing tens of thousands of people.
He said many villagers had been rounded up from the Medeina area near the southern city of Basra by Saddam’s troops soon after their defeat to United States-led forces in Kuwait in the first Gulf War.
”Our area was isolated due to the American bombardment and on March 19, when we saw Iraqi units approaching our area, we thought help had come — but instead the Iraqi troops started to shell and open fire on us,” he said.
Many Shi’ites who took part in the uprising say they had expected US forces to back them in the rebellion, but former president George Bush instead ordered a halt at the Iraqi border, leaving the rebels at the mercy of Saddam’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
Chemical Ali
The most high-profile defendant in the trial is Saddam’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as ”Chemical Ali”.
He and two co-accused — Sultan Hashim al-Tai, a former defence minister, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, former armed forces deputy chief of operations — had already been sentenced to death at a previous trial for genocide and crimes against humanity.
An appeals court is reviewing the death sentences imposed on them for their role in the Kurdish massacres in 1988, and is expected to give its decision soon.
If the panel certifies the sentence, the three will have to be executed within 30 days under Iraqi law. In that case, all charges against them in connection with the Shi’ite uprising would be dropped.
Since the March 2003 US-led invasion, experts have exhumed dozens of mass graves of victims killed in the uprising, and their reports are expected to be the key evidence during the trial.
Shi’ites, a minority in the Muslim world, comprise 60% of Iraq’s population and were ruled for decades by Saddam’s Sunni-led regime.
Officials say approximately 90 victims and witnesses are expected to testify against the defendants. — Sapa-AFP