Region | Iraq
Kurd curses Saddam for chemical attack
An Iraqi Kurd told Saddam Hussain's genocide trial on Wednesday she was horribly burned and lost three children after aircraft bombed her mountain village with chemical weapons.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 August 24, 2006
- Image Credit: Reuters
- Saddam addresses the court in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
Baghdad: An Iraqi Kurd told Saddam Hussain's genocide trial on Wednesday she was horribly burned and lost three children after aircraft bombed her mountain village with chemical weapons.
"I lost my sight. My children lost their sight ... My house was razed to the ground. May God blind them all," said Adiba Owla Bayez, pointing at the former Iraqi president and his six co-defendants on the third day of their trial.
Describing a spring evening in 1987, the 45-year-old mother of five said aircraft dropped bombs behind her house and she had immediately noticed a difference from previous attacks.
"We smelt a peculiar smell. It was rotten apple ... My daughter Nargis said she had pain in the stomach and in her eyes. She was vomiting. All my children were vomiting. I too felt like that and started vomiting," said Bayez.
The testimony echoed the recollections of two other witnesses of events on April 16, 1987, nearly a year before the formal launch of the Anfal campaign in the Balisan valley, north of Sulaimaniya.
Bayez, the wife of the trial's first witness, Ali Mustafa Hama, said she suffered two miscarriages and had an infant die at the age of three months following the attack.
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Saddam and his cousin, Ali Hassan Al Majid, are charged with genocide over the seven-month operation. Al Majid earned his nickname "Chemical Ali" after poison gas attacks in the north.
The other defendants, who argue the attacks were legitimate military strikes against Iraqi Kurds fighting with Iran against the regime in Baghdad, are charged with war crimes. Both charges carry a maximum penalty of death by hanging.
Bayez said that once the bombardment ceased, a helicopter hunted the villagers as they fled into the mountains. Those that escaped took refuge in caves.
"We were wounded, sick, but still fled. By now I was vomiting blood. My children were blind. My skin on the body had peeled off," she told the court, speaking Kurdish.
Saddam's soldiers soon rounded them up, shipping them to Arbil, where they were held with no medical treatment until being moved again.
"After nine days guards said 'all the wounded come to the courtyard of the detention centre'. I was screaming as my leg was burnt. I was unable to walk. My skin had peeled off, my children ... their skin was peeled," she said.
After photographing the captured Kurds, the men were separated and led away and the women and children were transported back to the countryside, where they were dumped.
"This Saddam Hussain has been unfair to Kurdish people. I complain against all these people who are in the cage," she said, referring to the enclosed dock holding the defendants.
On Monday, Saddam refused to plead and called the court a tool of the US occupation. The Shiite judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.
Unlike many witnesses in Saddam's first trial, for crimes against humanity over the killing of 148 Shiite men from Dujail, none of three heard so far have concealed their identity from the man who ruled Iraq through fear for three decades.
At least one defence lawyer has used a voice-distorting microphone and avoided appearing on television.
Three defence counsel in the Dujail trial have been killed, prompting critics to say a fair trial is impossible amid the sectarian and ethnic bloodshed ravaging Iraq.
A verdict in the Dujail trial is expected in October and Saddam faces the death penalty.
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