Woman recalls her torture, weeps in court
Angry Saddam yells at judge: ‘ Go to hell! At least 43 die in police academy suicide blasts
BAGHDAD— Her voice electronically altered but her weeping still apparent, a woman testified from behind a screen yesterday that she was assaulted and tortured with beatings and electric shocks by agents of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
In contrast to Monday’s session when he interrupted and berated male witnesses, Saddam sat stone- faced, silently taking notes as the woman known only as Witness A told how she and dozens of other families from the town of Dujail were arrested in a crackdown after a 1982 assassination attempt against the leader. But Saddam had several outbursts later in the trial, shouting at the judge at the end of the day’s long hearing: “ I will not return, I will not come to an unjust court! Go to hell!” The outburst came after an argument erupted between the judges and defence lawyers over the timing of the next session. The judge ruled the court would reconvene today to hear two more witnesses, overruling the lawyers’ request for a longer break.
“ Saddam was brought to the court not because he likes it,” said Iraqi lawyer Bassem al- Khalili, who is not involved in the trial. “ He has no right not to attend and he has no right to decide whether he will attend or not.”
Witness A told the court she suffered at the hands of Wadah al- Sheik, an Iraqi intelligence officer who died of cancer last month. “ I was forced to take off my clothes, and he raised my legs up and tied up my hands,” she said. “ He continued administering electric shocks and beating me.”
Several times, the woman — hidden behind a light blue curtain — broke down. “ God is great. Oh, my Lord!” she moaned, her voice electronically deepened and distorted. She strongly suggested she had been raped, but did not say so outright. When Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin asked her about the “ assault,” she said: “ I was beaten up and tortured by electrical shocks.” The witness, who was 16 at the time of her arrest, said again that she had been ordered to undress.
“ They made me put my legs up. They were more than one, as if I were their banquet, maybe more than five people, all of them are officers,” she said.
“ Is that what happens to the virtuous woman that Saddam speaks about?” she wept, prompting the judge to advise her to stick to the facts. When the judge asked which of the defendants she wanted to accuse, Witness A identified Saddam. “ When so many people are jailed and tortured, who takes such a decision?” she said. Saddam and seven lieutenants are on trial for killing more than 140 Shiites in Dujail, north of Baghdad, and could be executed by hanging if convicted.
Saddam’s outburst followed testimony from Witness C, a man, who told how his father died in Abu Ghraib prison, where the whole family was detained, after being beaten about the head. He said he was kept in a room 50 metres from his father.
That prompted complaints from Saddam about the conditions of his own detention. “ I live in an iron cage covered by a tent under American democratic rule. You are supposed to come see my cage,” he told Amin, the chief judge. As the trial went on, two suicide bombers detonated explosives inside Baghdad’s main police academy, killing at least 43 people and wounding more than 70, police said. Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack, the capital’s deadliest in months.
Iraqi police said the attackers — initially thought to be women — may have been policemen or students, fresh evidence that insurgents have infiltrated the country’s security forces.