Saddam Hussein’s notorious hatchet man ”Chemical Ali” was accused on Monday of ordering villagers executed in batches of 25 at a time as he brutally crushed a Shi’ite rebellion in Iraq in 1991.
The latest accusation against Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as ”Chemical Ali”, came as he and 14 other former regime officials returned to the dock for their trial on charges of crimes against humanity after a month-long break.
Al-Majid, Saddam’s cousin, is due to be hanged soon after his conviction for genocide in a separate trial, although the date of his execution is not known.
In the Shi’ite uprising trial, al-Majid and his co-defendants are accused of having overseen a bloodbath in which up to 100 000 people were killed by Saddam’s security forces.
The slaughter came in March 1991 after Iraqi occupation troops were driven out of Kuwait by a United States-led alliance in the Gulf War.
Al-Majid had sought another adjournment, saying defence lawyers were too scared to attend the trial, but the trial judge ordered proceedings to continue.
A witness, speaking from behind a curtain in the high-security Iraqi high tribunal to conceal his identity, said his son was among those executed on March 25 1991 at a stadium near the southern port city of Basra.
A second son, also detained when the army entered their village on March 15, was later freed and told him of the executions, the witness said.
”People were executed at a sports centre — there were about 200 executed. They were executed in batches — 25 at a time. Ali Majid was present for the execution of the first batch and then he told his guards to continue executing the others and he left,” said the witness, who described himself as ”an old man”.
The bodies were later found in a mass grave uncovered during excavations for a building project, he added.
Al-Majid angrily responded that he wasn’t even in Basra at the time. ”How can you say I executed people?” he demanded of the witness. ”You were not there. You only heard, you did not see. How can you be so sure? I wasn’t in Basra at all at that time.”
Adjournment
Al-Majid, looking gaunt and wizened, shuffled into the court leaning on a cane when proceedings began. He — along with two co-defendants in the latest trial, former defence minister Sultan Hashim al-Tai and former armed forces deputy chief of operations Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti — is awaiting execution after being sentenced to death for the massacre of up to 182 000 Kurds in 1988.
At the opening of Monday’s session, al-Majid and another defendant, Ibrahim Abdul Razzaz, sought an adjournment, saying their lawyers were afraid to attend court and had asked for protection from the US military that was refused.
”My brothers here have some demands,” al-Majid told Judge Mohammed al-Khalifah al-Oreibi. ”They said they would stop eating and drinking if their lawyers are not back. They need more negotiations [with the US military]. I don’t think this will take more than one month.”
Oreibi noted his comments but went on to call the first witness of the day.
Razzaz had earlier told the judge: ”The Americans refuse to protect our lawyers. This is a serious case. They are saying we are killers, but we were soldiers doing our job. We need our lawyers. We are not criminals.”
Oreibi brushed him off, saying the defendants had court-appointed lawyers who were familiar with the case.
Testimony
Monday’s first witness began by describing events on March 15, when army vehicles and tanks surrounded his area in the village of al-Hussein near Basra.
”The tanks started to shell our houses. There were lots of soldiers. I told my family to run away. The soldiers took my two sons,” he said. ”They were rounding up all the young men of the village. One of the boys resisted, so they shot him dead. I saw it with my own eyes. Many houses were destroyed.”
He said a tank also destroyed his house while soldiers went away with his household belongings. ”I hid in another house until the next morning, then I ran away to another district, which was safer.”
Other witnesses have said that Saddam’s troops massacred people around the holy Shi’ite cities of Najaf and Karbala and in the Hilla and Basra regions during the 1991 bloodletting.
Many Shi’ites who joined the uprising say they had expected US forces to back them, but former US president George Bush instead ordered a halt at the Iraqi border, leaving the rebels at the mercy of Saddam’s forces. — Sapa-AFP