Judge expels Saddam aides from court
The order came as a 76-year-old former Shi’ite politician testified he was falsely imprisoned for months in the aftermath of the uprising and described fellow inmates being carried back to jail in blankets after hours of torture rendered them unable to walk.
“I was later released because of the presidential pardon, but my life was already destroyed. I was dismissed from the parliament. My cotton was destroyed by the army shelling and my house was damaged,” Kamil Kanoun Abu al-Heil recalled.
Saddam’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, who gained the nickname “Chemical Ali” after poison gas attacks on Kurdish towns in the 1980s, and 14 others went on trial yesterday for crimes against humanity in the case, which stems from the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, in which a US-led coalition drove Saddam’s army from Kuwait.
Iraqi Shi’ites in the south and Kurds in the north — repressed under Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime — sought to take advantage of the defeat, launching separate uprisings and briefly seizing control of 14 of the country’s 18 provinces.
US troops created a safe haven for Kurds in three northern provinces, preventing Saddam from attacking. But Iraqi troops crushed the other uprising in the predominantly Shi’ite south, killing tens of thousands.
Mr Al-Heil denied that he was part of the uprising, pointing out he was a member of Saddam’s rubber-stamp parliament.
In the middle of yesterday’s session, the chief judge, Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, ordered former Republican Guards commander, Major General Iyad Fathi al-Rawi — who led the 1988 offensives at the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war — to leave the courtroom “for not sticking to the rules of the court.”
Half an hour later, he dismissed former defence minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, for the same reason.
It is the third trial of former regime officials. The first led to the hanging of Saddam and three others.
