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=> Katreen Michael the Kurd-Christian

Katreen Michael the Kurd-Christian
Posted by Qasrani (Guest) qasrani2003@yahoo.com - Tuesday, September 12 2006, 0:28:16 (CEST)
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Sep 11, 2:11 PM EDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A defiant Saddam Hussein accused Kurdish witnesses at his genocide trial Monday of trying to divide Iraqis by alleging chemical attacks and mass arrests during a crackdown that the prosecution says killed up to 180,000 people.

Three Kurdish witnesses told of brutal repression during Operation Anfal, the 1987-88 campaign against a Kurdish revolt in the final stages of Iraq's war with Iran. Saddam accused the Kurds of helping Iran in the war.

One of the witnesses, a Kurdish-American, said she saw people sickened and dying during a chemical attack and demanded compensation from foreign companies that supplied Saddam with chemicals, supposedly for agriculture.

"All the witnesses said in the courtroom that they were oppressed because they were Kurds," Saddam shouted after hearing the testimony. "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 deposed president said the Iraqi people "should not suffer from the guilt that they killed Kurds" and insisted that he treated loyal Iraqi Kurds fairly. Only those who joined the Kurdish insurgency were punished, he said.

Since the trial opened Aug. 21, witnesses have offered grim testimony of entire families dying in chemical weapons attacks. They said survivors plunged their faces into milk to try to end the pain from the blinding gas or fled into the hills on mules as military helicopters fired on them.

Saddam is among seven defendants charged with genocide or other offenses during Operation Anfal. If convicted, they could face death by hanging.

The trial resumed Monday after a nearly three-week break.

Katreen Elias Mikhail, a Kurdish Christian and former militia fighter, testified that four Iraqi planes unleashed a wave of bombs on the evening of June 5, 1987, on the Kurdish town of Qalizewa in northern Iraq.

"I smelled something dirty and strange," she told the court. "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."

Mikhail said she had come to court to lodge a personal complaint against Saddam, his cousin and co-defendant Ali "Chemical Ali" al-Majid as well as all those who provided the regime with chemicals used in the attacks.

"I demand compensation," she said.

Witness Ahmed Abdul-Rahman told the court he was rounded up from a village near Sulaimaniyah and imprisoned for four months "where they investigated us, they tortured us and they beat us."

A third witness, Sardar Ali Salih, said Saddam's Republican Guards raided his village in 1987, arresting Kurdish men and seizing sheep, the residents' livelihood.

"While in prison, they beat and tortured us. I stayed there for three months," Salih said. "There were 126 detainees with me. They took 58 and put us in another room. They told us that we would be released, that Saddam ordered our release." The others disappeared, including two of his brothers.

Saddam is still awaiting a verdict on Oct. 16 in the first case against him - the nine-month-long trial over the killings of 148 Shiites in Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against him there. In that case as well, he and seven other co-defendants could face the death penalty.

The Anfal trial, which began in August, is also likely to take months.

The Bush administration had argued that the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was needed to unseat Saddam because he possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al-Qaida.

As recently as Aug. 21, President Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with al-Zarqawi," referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June.

However, a recent U.S. Senate committee report found no link between Saddam and the terror network, and Saddam's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction was debunked after the invasion, when none could be found.

Yet the Anfal case points to his alleged use of poison gas against Iraqi citizens, a charge often leveled by Washington.

Kurdish survivors say many villages were razed and countless young men disappeared.

They also accuse the army of using prohibited mustard gas and nerve agents. The current trial does not deal with the most notorious gassing - the March 1988 attack on Halabja that killed an estimated 5,000 Kurds. That incident will be part of a separate investigation.



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