PDA

View Full Version : Sadaam Husein's Trial



Katydid
12-06-2005, 07:18 AM
Your Comments....

By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
4 minutes ago



BAGHDAD, Iraq - A woman whose identity was kept secret and voice masked took the stand in the trial of Saddam Hussein on Tuesday, testifying through tears that Saddam's men beat her as a teenager and forced her to take her clothes off.

ADVERTISEMENT

Saddam sat stone-faced as the woman, identified only as "Witness A," told the court from behind a light blue curtain that she was taken into custody after the 1982 assassination attempt against the former Iraqi president in the town of Dujail.

The woman often cried during her testimony and repeatedly said she was forced to undress, implying that she had been raped but not saying so outright.

"I begged them, but they hit with their pistols," she said. "They made me put my legs up. There were five or more and they treated me like a banquet."

"Is that what happens to the virtuous woman that Saddam speaks about?" she wept, prompting the judge to advise her to stick to the facts.

The woman, who said she was 16 at the time of the Dujail incident, said Wadah al-Sheik, an Iraqi intelligence officer who died of cancer last month, ordered her to take off her clothes.

"He continued administering electric shocks and beating me," she said.

The measures taken to preserve the woman's anonymity complicated the testimony. At first, defense attorneys complained they could not hear her because of the voice distortion. Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin ordered the voice modulator shut off, but then the audience could not hear at all, so Amin ordered a recess, and the modulator was fixed, allowing the press and audience to hear.

Defense attorneys insisted on questioning the witness face to face and demanded that the defendants should also see her. So after she gave her testimony for over an hour, Amin ordered the session closed to the public, pulling screens in front of the press and visitors gallery and cutting the sound.

Amin said that defense attorneys would be told the identity of the witness but they must not pass the information to anyone outside the tribunal.

A second female, Witness B, then took the stand. After the 74-year-old began her testimony, the judge decided the voice modulator wasn't working properly and ordered it turned off and all of the electronic feeds from the courtroom cut, including to the press gallery.

Witnesses have the option of not having their identities revealed as a security measure to protect them against reprisals by Saddam loyalists. The first two witnesses — both males who took the stand Monday — allowed their names to be announced and their pictures shown.

Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for the killing of more than 140 Shiites in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad and could be executed by hanging if convicted. Monday's session was a stormy one, as Saddam repeatedly stood to challenge the judge and witnesses.

But on Tuesday, the ousted leader and his former officials sat largely silently, listening intently as Witness A spoke.

She described four years in Saddam's prisons after she and other families were swept up in Dujail following the shooting attack on Saddam's motorcade. She said she was held and tortured at a detention facility there before being taken to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Later they were taken to a desert facility outside the southern city of Samawa.

At the Dujail facility, she said she was thrown into a room with red walls and ceiling in an intelligence department building and that prisoners were given only bread and water to eat.

"I could not even eat because of the torture," she said.

At Abu Ghraib, the guards stripped one of her male relatives, a deaf mute, and tied a rope to his genitalia, pulling him into the cells where the women were kept, she said.

She said one of her relatives wanted to give birth in jail. "The baby was out. When some women tried to help her, the guards prevented them," and the baby died, she said.

In Monday's session, a defiant Saddam sought to take control of the proceedings through boisterous outbursts, declaring at one point that "I am not afraid of execution" and denouncing the trial run according to "American rules."

Despite the sometimes free-for-all atmosphere Monday, the trial's first witnesses offered chilling accounts of killings and torture using electric shocks and a grinder during a 1982 crackdown against Shiites.

Ahmed Hassan Mohammed said he saw a machine that "looked like a grinder" with hair and blood on it in a secret police center in Baghdad where he and others were tortured for 70 days. He said detainees were kept in "Hall 63."

Mohammed recalled how security agents rounded up townspeople of all ages, from 14 to more than 70.

"There were mass arrests. Women and men. Even if a child was 1-day-old, they used to tell his parents, 'Bring him with you,'" Mohammed said.

The testimony drew an angry response from Saddam, who suggested that Mohammed needed psychiatric treatment and accused the court of bowing to American pressure.

"When the revolution of the heroic Iraq arrives, you will be held accountable," Saddam warned the chief judge.

"This is an insult to the court," Amin responded. "We are searching for the truth."

"How can a judge like yourself accept a situation like this?" Saddam asked. "This game must not continue. If you want Saddam Hussein's neck, you can have it. I have exercised my constitutional prerogatives after I had been the target of an armed attack.

When Mohammed objected to some of Saddam's remarks, the former president snapped: "Do not interrupt me, son."

Nickdfresh
12-06-2005, 08:58 AM
I watched some of it as I was up early morning, ugggghhhhhghhhhhhhggg....

Actually, SADDAM's defense team is doing quite well considering HUSSEIN is a deadman no matter what...

The ABU GHRAIB question was a particular ironic twist no one saw coming...

Vinnie Velvet
12-06-2005, 11:01 AM
Interesting...

Warham
12-06-2005, 03:16 PM
If you listened to John Kerry lately, you wouldn't know for sure whether he's talking about Hussein torturing people or US troops torturing people.

Nickdfresh
12-06-2005, 03:39 PM
Originally posted by Warham
If you listened to John Kerry lately, you wouldn't know for sure whether he's talking about Hussein torturing people or US troops torturing people.

Dude, you're starting to sound like WAYNE L.:D Have you been sucking on your wife's toes or something?

Warham
12-06-2005, 03:42 PM
Kerry must be running as the anti-war candidate in 2008. Of course, before he was anti-war, he was pro-war.

;)

Nickdfresh
12-06-2005, 06:42 PM
Originally posted by Warham
Kerry must be running as the anti-war candidate in 2008. Of course, before he was anti-war, he was pro-war.

;)

He also never proclaimed the War over, and then failed to plan for what came after we sacked Baghdad...

Nickdfresh
12-06-2005, 07:33 PM
BTW, who is Sadaam Husein's?

Wow, the 'Blue state' trolls are in full effect today.:D