BAGHDAD, 23 December 2005 — Saddam Hussein denounced US leaders as liars at a turbulent court hearing yesterday and his once-feared intelligence chief abused prosecutors before threatening to boycott the rest of the trial.
Iraq’s former leader, facing possible hanging if convicted, said the White House had lied to justify its 2003 invasion by saying he had chemical weapons, and had lied again Wednesday when it denied his claim he was tortured in US custody.
He reiterated the torture allegation at yesterday’s hearing and accused American soldiers of stealing his watch.
Three witnesses testified about abuse they said they and other detainees suffered in Saddam’s jails. Speaking from behind a curtain to conceal their identities, they gave long and sometimes chilling accounts of beatings and deprivation.
Saddam appeared more concerned with his own plight. “The White House are liars,” he told the court, where he and seven others, including his half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim Al-Tikriti, stand accused of crimes against humanity. “They said Iraq had chemical weapons,” Saddam added.
Iraq developed chemical weapons in the 1980s and used them against Iran and Iraqi Kurds. It is now thought to have destroyed its remaining stocks after the 1991 Gulf War.
Saddam said he had marks on his body to prove he had been tortured by the Americans, but he did not show them and the judge has not so far ordered an investigation.
The White House has already dismissed his torture claim as “preposterous” and was backed up yesterday by Raed Jouhi, the Iraqi magistrate who brought the case against Saddam to court.
“We didn’t receive a single complaint of abuse from the defendants even when we asked them about their treatment,” he told reporters inside the heavily fortified Baghdad court. “They have a constant power supply, hygiene and good food.”
Saddam delivered his latest broadside early in the hearing, the seventh in a stop-start trial which began Oct. 19. At the end of the day, Kurdish Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin ordered another adjournment — the fourth since the trial started — until Jan. 24.
For most of the session, the man who ruled Iraq for 24 years sat quietly in his black leather chair at the front of the defendants’ dock while Barzan took center stage, accusing prosecutors of being former Baath party members. “This is the biggest insult in my life, to be associated with this blood-stained party,” replied one prosecutor, who asked to be relieved of his duties because of personal insults from the dock — a request dismissed by the Kurdish judge.
Barzan then complained about the way the trial was being televised. It is being broadcast with a delay of 30 minutes to allow court officials to censor images and sound, which they have sometimes done when Saddam or Barzan have spoken.
“If the sound is cut off once again, then I don’t know about my comrades but I personally won’t attend again,” Barzan said. “This is unjust and undemocratic.”
The eight defendants in the trial are charged in connection with the killing of 148 people from the mainly Shiite village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in the 1980s.
Prosecutors say Saddam ordered the killings in reprisal for a failed bid to assassinate him in the village in 1982. Scores of families from Dujail were rounded up and shunted between jails around Iraq for four years after the attack. All eight deny the charges, although Barzan suggested yesterday there had been reprisals for the assassination attempt. “I can’t say that no one was hurt because what happened was big,” he said referring to the assassination attempt.
