Baghdad, Iraq – On trial facing genocide charges, Saddam Hussein used his courtroom time Monday to urge Iraqis to resist forces he said were trying to divide the country.
“Iraqis will not split,” Hussein said.
During Monday’s court session, inside a heavily guarded palace in Baghdad’s Green Zone, three witnesses testified about chemical attacks in Kurdistan in the 1980s that left people blinded and maimed.
“All the witnesses said in the courtroom that they were oppressed because they were Kurds,” Hussein said. “They’re trying to create strife between the people of Iraq. They’re trying to create division between Kurds and Arabs, and this is what I want the people of Iraq to know.”
Hussein and six co-defendants are charged with killing as many as 100,000 Kurds during a military offensive known as the Anfal campaign in the 1980s. If found guilty, Hussein faces the death penalty. In a separate trial, Hussein has been charged with the killing of 182 Shiites from the village of Dujayl after an attempt on his life there in 1982.
Katrin Michael, a former Kurdish fighter who now lives in Virginia and works as a writer and editor, recounted two Iraqi air force bombings in 1987 and 1988. During the first attack, the Iraqi military used chemical weapons against the Kurds, the 56-year-old said.
Michael blamed not only Hussein and his cousin Ali Hassan Majid, nicknamed “Chemical Ali,” but also “every international organization and international company who supplied the Iraq regime with these weapons.” All those parties, she said, should compensate the victims.
At another point in the trial, the judge admonished a defense attorney because he referred to Hussein as “president.” Hussein replied: “The Americans – the enemies of Iraq – took this title from me. Some Iraqis still consider me the president.”
The trial was set to resume today.
