Saddam trial: Defendants testify in court

Three of Saddam Hussein’s co-defendants testified for the first time today, denying any role in the deaths and arrests of Shiites in the 1980s, as the trial of the former Iraqi leader entered a new phase.

The three, Mizhar Abullah Ruwayyid, his father Abdullah Ruwayyid and Ali Daih Ali – former officials in Saddam’s ruling Ba’ath Party – stood one-by-one to be directly questioned by the chief judge and prosecutors about the crackdown launched against the Shiite town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam.

After hearing their testimony for about four hours, chief judhe Raouf Abdel-Rahman adjourned the trial until tomorrow.

Saddam was expected to testify last out of the defendants - meaning he might take the stand tomorrow.

Abdel-Rahman asked each defendant to relate to the court what he was doing on the day of the assassination attempt against Saddam, whose motorcade was fired on as he visited Dujail on July 8, 1982. Prosecutors also questioned each of the three in turn.

Mizhar Ruwayyid, the first to appear, said he was working as a telephone operator and that he held only a low-level position in the Ba’ath Party at the time.

“I have no relation with the July 8 incident and I was not involved in any detentions that followed,” he said.

Abdel-Rahman asked him about handwritten letters prosecutors presented last month, saying they were from Ruwayyid informing to police on Dujail families allegedly linked to the Shiite opposition in the wake of the shooting. Many of the families listed were arrested and several were eventually killed.

Ruwayyid denied the letters were his. “The state and the security services did not need the help of a small employee like me,” he insisted.

The elder Ruwayyid told the judge he saw fellow defendant Barzan Ibrahim - Saddam’s half-brother and the head of intelligence at the time – in Dujail after the shooting.

“After performing the afternoon prayers I went out and saw Interior Minister Saadoun (Shaker) and Barzan Ibrahim in the yard of the Ba’ath Party office by themselves. They were talking. This is what I saw,” he said.

But he, too, denied any role in the crackdown that followed. “I have never detained people. I cannot even harm an insect,” he said. “I will say the truth even it takes me to the gallows.”

Ali, the second to testify, said he was in Baghdad the day of the shooting, though he returned to Dujail later in the day. “My foot did not step into any house in Dujail. We did not harm the people of Dujail and we did not write reports about them,” he insisted.

Abdel-Rahman asked Ali about his signed affidavit to investigators, in which he said Ibrahim was heading the Dujail crackdown and that Taha Yassin Ramadan, another of the defendants, was in charge of razing Dujail farmland.

Ali replied that he had only heard the two men were involved, not seen them, and said he had not read the affidavit before signing it. “My eyes started hurting after reading three lines,” he said.

The court was silent as the defendants spoke. The defence team – including former US attorney general Ramsey Clarke – was present.

Last month, prosecutors began presenting documents they say directly pin Saddam to the Dujail crackdown – including a memo approving death sentences against the 148 Shiites signed by Saddam.

But to convict the former Iraqi leader, they will have to convince the five-judge panel that Saddam was aware that the crackdown went well beyond the actual authors of the assassination attempt and aimed to punish a large civilian population.

Families – including women and young children – were swept up in the arrests and spent years in prison, and large swathes of farmland owned by Dujail families were razed. A string of Dujail residents have testified they were tortured in prison.