Saddam 'crackdown' tape played to Baghdad trial

Prosecutors in the Baghdad trial of Saddam Hussein today played an audiotape said to be a phone call between the former Iraqi leader and one of his co-defendants discussing the destruction of farmlands during a crackdown against Shiites in the 1980s.

In the tape, a voice purported to be that of Taha Yassin Ramadan said the levelling of farms and palm groves in the town of Dujail, carried out as retaliation for an attack on Saddam there, had been nearly completed and that the owners would be given compensation.