The prime minister of Iraq today ordered an investigation into the conduct of Saddam Hussein’s execution in a bid to learn who in the group of witnesses taunted the former Iraqi leader in the last minutes of his life and leaked a mobile-phone video of his death to an Arab satellite television station and website.

A court in the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein heard harrowing accounts today that the former Iraqi leader’s forces beheaded a mentally-ill Kurdish man and pushed three other Kurds out of a helicopter in mid-air during a crackdown 20 years ago.

A Baghdad court saw chilling videos of gassed children lying in a field and villagers fleeing clouds of white smoke as prosecutors today argued that Saddam Hussein and his regime had used chemical weapons against the Kurds of northern Iraq in the late 1980s.

A Kurdish chemistry teacher gave a harrowing account at Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial today of the death of 40 fellow villagers, including his mother and two daughters, in an alleged chemical attack in 1988.

A Kurdish security officer testifying in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial in Baghdad, Iraq, today showed the court body burns he allegedly received when armies of the deposed leader attacked his northern Iraqi village in 1988.

THE chief judge in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial in Iraq said yesterday that he did not believe the former Iraqi leader was a dictator.

The chief judge in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial in Iraq said today that he did not believe the former Iraqi leader was a dictator.

The chief prosecutor in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial against the Kurds today demanded the presiding judge step down, accusing him of being biased toward the deposed leader and his co-defendants.

A DEFIANT Saddam Hussein shouted at prosecutors and refused to enter a plea yesterday at the opening of his second trial, in which he faces charges of genocide and war crimes connected to his scorched-earth offensive against the Kurds nearly two decades ago.