Region | Iraq
Feel no guilt over crushing Kurdish insurgency, Saddam tells Iraqis
A 56-year-old Kurdish-American woman told of seeing people sickened and dying during an alleged chemical attack carried out by Saddam Hussain's forces.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 September 12, 2006
- Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein testifies during his trial at the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, September 11.
- Image Credit: Reuters
Baghdad: A 56-year-old Kurdish-American woman told of seeing people sickened and dying during an alleged chemical attack carried out by Saddam Hussain's forces, as the genocide trial of the ex-president resumed yesterday.
The feisty former leader told his countrymen they should not feel guilty for crushing the Kurdish insurgency in the late 1980s.
"My message to the Iraqi people is that they should not suffer from the guilt that they killed Kurds," Saddam said shortly before the trial was adjourned for the day. It had just resumed after a three-week break.
The ousted president accused Kurdish witnesses against him of stirring sectarianism and racism and insisted he treated loyal Iraqi Kurds fairly.
"All the witnesses said in the courtroom that they were oppressed because they were Kurds," Saddam shouted.
"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." The prosecution alleges that about 180,000 people were killed during the Anfal campaign in 1987-88 to crush a Kurdish insurgency during the later stages of a war with Iran.
Addressing Iraqis, Saddam said passionately that the Kurds enjoyed rights under his regime and that he clamped down on insurgents among them.
He said before Iraq fought in the 2003 war against the United States, "I formed two brigades in the Republican Guards composed completely of Kurds. This is a proof that the Iraqi government then did not discriminate against Kurds."
"The other proof is that when I was in Kut following the victory against Iran [in 1988], I said in front of everyone, including the media and television stations, that I prohibit the security to arrest any Kurd," he said.
"I told them that anyone who has a complaint against a Kurd has to come to me first."
"I didn't offer the same, and God is my witnesses, to the people of Basra or my family in Tikrit, but only to the Kurds," he asserted.
Proceedings adjourned until today after the court heard three witnesses testify on the alleged chemical attack on northern Iraq.
During the morning session, Katreen Elias Mikhail, a Kurdish Christian and former militia fighter, said four Iraqi planes unleashed a wave of bombs on the evening of June 5, 1987 on the town of Qalizewa, sending people fleeing for shelter.
"I smelled something dirty and strange," she told the court.
Mikhail said she was stranded in an underground shelter with her friend Umm Ali and dozens of other people.
"Then, I heard comrade Abu Elias shout 'is there a doctor here?"' said the dignified-looking woman, her left hand trembling.
"People were falling to the ground. They vomited and their eyes were blinded. We couldn't see anything."
"We were all afraid," she said, her voice cracking. "It was our first time seeing bombs falling on our heads." Sitting in the witness stand, she said that her friend, Nashme, told her that "the whole town was hit with chemical weapons."
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