Saddam urges
Iraqis to reconcile differences
BAGHDAD—Saddam Hussein, back in court two days after being sentenced to
hang for crimes against humanity, urged Iraqis on Tuesday to seek
reconciliation. Invoking Prophet Mohammad and Jesus, Saddam told a court
trying him for genocide against Kurds: “I call on all Iraqis, Arabs and
Kurds, to forgive, reconcile and shake hands.”
Saddam met his death sentence in the first trial on Sunday with cries of
“God is Greatest!” and “Down with the invaders!.” On Tuesday he was
unusually subdued during a session in which he quietly listened to
witnesses recount how they were detained, shot or gassed by Iraqi
soldiers in the late 1980s.
Saddam and six former commanders face charges of genocide for their
roles in the 1988 Anfal (Spoils of War) military campaign against ethnic
Kurds. Prosecutors say up to 180,000 Kurds were killed, many of them by
gas attacks. The ousted president’s fate after the earlier trial is now
in the hands of an appellate chamber. No execution is likely before next
year.
He was found guilty of crimes against humanity for ordering hundreds of
Shi’ites killed or tortured in the town of Dujail after an assassination
attempt in 1982. The ruling sparked condemnation among Sunni Arabs, who
say the U.S.-backed court is an instrument of political revenge for
Shi’ites and Kurds, persecuted under Saddam’s Sunni government and now
in power.
The verdict has highlighted deep divisions between Iraq’s communities
that threaten to push the country into civil war. On Sunday, Saddam
refused to stand up when the judge began reading his verdict. When a
guard was ordered to make him get to his feet, Saddam shouted: “Don’t
twist my hand, you fool!”
When he was summoned by the judge on Tuesday, Saddam, dressed in a black
suit and tieless shirt and smiling faintly, filed into the marbled
courtroom, once a palatial office of his Baath party, and made his way
quietly to his seat.
Defense attorneys, who dismissed Saddam’s death sentence as “victor’s
justice” and have criticized the U.S.-backed court as illegitimate,
continued their month-old boycott in protest against the government’s
decision to sack the previous judge. Court-appointed lawyers sat in.
At one point, the fallen strongman challenged a witness who took his
shirt off to show what he said were scars suffered after being shot on
Saddam’s orders. “So these people in the cage or some of them carried
out the acts directly?” Saddam politely addressed the judge.
“When he says there are two officers, what do they look like? Does this
bring us to the truth?” Witness Qahar Khalil Mohammad told the court he
and other villagers had surrendered to Iraqi soldiers after being
promised that Saddam had issued an amnesty. Instead, they were lined up
at the bottom of a hill and soldiers opened fire.
“When they fired in our direction we all fell to the ground,” he said.
“I saw my father and two brothers had been killed as well as 18 of my
other relatives.”—Agencies |
