Prisoners fed through shredders, MPs told

CHILLING new details of Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror in Iraq were revealed to British MPs yesterday.

Researchers preparing an indictment of Saddam for crimes against humanity detailed evidence of torture, murder and ethnic cleansing gathered from witnesses in northern Iraq over the past few weeks.

Their report included eyewitness testimony of prisoners being killed by being fed through industrial shredders and children being gassed in jail.

And the MPs heard an impassioned plea for military intervention from Shanaz Rachid, the daughter of prominent Kurdish leader Ibrahim Ahmed, who accused the international community of standing by for more than two decades while the Iraqi people suffered under Saddam.

Iraqi Kurds and Shia Muslims would welcome war to unseat the dictator, but were fearful chemical weapons would be used to massacre them if US and British troops withdrew from the area without toppling him, she said.

Ms Rachid was scathing about the role of French President Jacques Chirac in leading opposition to war, which she said the Kurdish people would not "easily forget".

Presenting evidence to MPs at the House of Commons, researchers from Indict the organisation gathering evidence to prosecute Saddam and his henchmen said many of the stories they were told were so horrific they were difficult to believe. But there was a "remarkable consistency" in evidence from many different sources, which boosted its credibility.

Witnesses had told them about prisoners of the regime having nails torn out, being given electric shocks to the genitals, tortured with boiling water and beaten. Women were raped while their husbands were forced to watch.

Saddam's son Qusay had administered mustard gas on prisoners, including a 12-year-old boy whose father heard his screams from a neighbouring cell, they were told.

One witness described a particularly horrific method of execution: "There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were ... made to watch.

"Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming."