Survivors tell Saddam trial of chemical attack

SURVIVORS yesterday told Saddam Hussein’s trial how poisonous clouds of gas killed children and blinded residents during a military offensive against Kurds in 1987.

Saddam’s co-defendants insisted that the Anfal campaign, in which tens of thousands of Kurds were killed, was directed only at Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian troops in northern Iraq during the bloody Iran-Iraq war.

Saddam faces charges of genocide in the trial. Six co-defendants are in the dock with him over the 1987-1988 Anfal campaign, in which troops swept across parts of northern Iraq, destroying villages.

Two survivors told the court about an April 16, 1987 attack on the Kurdish villages of Basilan and Sheik Wasan — believed to be the first time Saddam’s regime used chemical weapons on Iraqi citizens.

“The villagers were blinded and they were vomiting — only God knows what it was like that night,” said Najiba Khider Ahmed, a 41-year-old woman from Sheik Wasan. She described being held in a detention camp for nine days, where her brother and niece disappeared.

“During those nine days, it was like the apocalypse. Even Hitler didn’t do this,” she said, breaking down into tears repeatedly.

She said she had two pregnancies after the attack — the baby in the first was born with skin peeling off, and the second miscarried, born with malformed limbs, which she blamed on the gas attacks.

Another survivor, Ali Mostafa Hama, said the chemical bombs let off greenish smoke.

“It was if there was a rotten apple or garlic smell minutes later. People were vomiting... we were blind and screaming. There was no one to rescue us. Just God.”

Throughout the testimony, Saddam and the defence lawyers insisted the two had been coached in their testimony — with one lawyer asking how Ms Ahmed, who said she was illiterate, could specify that Russian-made Sukhoi warplanes carried out the bombardment.

Two of the defendants addressed the court and insisted Anfal was targeted at Iranian troops and allied Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq.

* The senior British commander in Iraq, Lt Gen Robert Fry said yesterday the country’s sectarian conflict is not a full-blown civil war but could be described as a “civil war in miniature.”