Saddam's defence team shows DVDs in new session of trial

The judge in the Baghdad trial of Saddam Hussein today allowed the defence to play DVDs it said showed a prosecution witness contradicting his testimony.

The DVDs are part of a defence attempt to question the credibility of Ali al-Haidari, one of the first witnesses to testify in the trial of Saddam and seven former members of his regime. They are charged with crimes against humanity in a crackdown against Shiites launched after a 1982 assassination attempt on Saddam in the town of Dujail

Al-Haidari testified in December that he was arrested aged 14 in the Dujail sweep and was tortured with electrical shocks and beatings.

One of the videos, shown in court today, included footage of his testimony, in which he insisted there was no shooting attack on Saddam in Dujail on July 8, 1982 – only celebratory shooting to mark the former Iraqi leader’s visit.

The DVD then shows al-Haidari addressing a 2004 ceremony in Dujail and praising the attack on Saddam as an attempt by “sons of Dujail … to kill the greatest tyrant in modern history”.

Another of the DVDs aimed to support the defence’s contention that the razing of farmlands in Dujail that rook place during the crackdown was not a retaliation against its residents for the attack on Saddam. The defence has said it was part of a programme to rebuild and modernise Dujail.

The video showed Saddam giving a speech declaring that now that the farmlands were destroyed, “we have a lot of land and can let everyone from Dujail have a house … They wanted land to build on and live in, but we were not able to before because of the nature of the land”.

Saddam and his co-defendants face possible execution by hanging if convicted on the charges.

They are accused of arresting hundreds of Dujail families in the crackdown, torturing and killing women and children and killing 148 Shiites who were sentenced to death for the assassination attempt.