Forensic expert describes Kurdish mass graves in Saddam trial

Kurdish victims found in three mass graves included more than 230 women and children along with dozens of adult men, who were lined up and gunned down by troops and buried where they fell, an American forensic expert testified today in the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein.

Michael Trimble described a number of the bodies his team analysed from the graves: a pregnant woman shot through her abdomen, killing the foetus; a young girl wearing little green boots whose leg had been shattered by bullets and an infant who had no bullet wounds and apparently smothered under the body of his mother.

It was the third straight day of testimony by American forensic experts in the trial of Saddam and six co-defendants, who face possible execution if convicted for a 1987/1988 military offensive against the Kurds of northern Iraq, code-named Operation Anfal.

The prosecution estimates that 180,000 Kurds were killed in the campaign, in which Iraqi troops allegedly destroyed hundreds of villages and executed or dispersed their inhabitants in a scorched-earth campaign to put down Kurdish rebels.

Trimble, a forensic archaeologist with the US Army Corps of Engineers, investigated the three mass graves in 2004 on behalf of the Iraqi tribunal that is prosecuting Saddam and members of his regime.

The graves, two in the northern province of Nineva and one in the southern province of Muthanna, contained 301 bodies, all of them believed to be Kurds detained in the Anfal campaign, Trimble told the court. He said forensic examination suggested they have been killed between 1988 and 1990.

In one of the Nineva sites the bodies of 25 women and 98 children were found and in the other 64 adult males were found. In the Muthanna site, 27 women, 85 children and two adult males were found, he said.

The graves were dug by earth-moving equipment or shovels in remote desert locations and the captives, bound and blindfolded, “were led into the graves and then executed with pistols or automatic assault rifle fire”, he said.

“The graves were then covered by those directing the execution.”

He showed the court photos of the bodies and grave sites and computer reconstructions of the scene, saying that the group of 64 men, many of them bound to each other, were standing in an arc, twisting to try to escape the gunfire, as shown by the entry patterns of the bullets, he said.

From the Muthanna grave, one woman had wounds in her hands, suggesting she had held them up to protect herself, he said. He showed the picture of an infant wearing a necklace and a pacifier, saying the child, aged three to nine months, had no bullet wounds.

“This child’s ribs were broken on the right side,” he said. “This child probably smothered to death in his mother’s arms because a broken rib would not have killed it.”

During the testimony, Saddam disputed Trimble’s neutrality, saying he came from the “army of the enemy”, referring to the 2003 US invasion that toppled his regime.

“Let me suggest the court consider what is said by the American expert but also call a new trial expert that has nothing to do with the enemy or the army of the enemy,” he said.

“Let him come and examine the mass graves, or other mass graves, because I know there are more mass graves, and let him start neutrally.”

“Any Iraqi person will notice that only American experts are coming…and will be suspicious,” he said. “So I suggest bringing neutral witnesses.”

One of his co-defendants, Hussein Rashid Mohammed, former deputy director of operations for the Iraqi Armed Forces, insisted he “had nothing to do” with the detentions and executions of Kurds. “I didn’t issue orders to people” involved in executions, he said.

Mohammed insisted Anfal was a “clean” campaign, aimed at Kurdish rebel allies to Iran, with which Iraq was at war. “We were fighting Iranians who were occupying part of Iraq,” he said. “We have the right to fight.”

After Trimble’s testimony, the trial was adjourned until Monday.

All seven defendants in the case are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity due to the Anfal campaign. Saddam and his top co-defendant Ali Hassan al-Majid face additional charges of genocide. The defendants have pleaded innocent.

Saddam was sentenced to death by hanging in an earlier trial on charges of crimes against humanity for a campaign against Shiites in the 1980s. The sentence undergoes automatic appeal.

Iraqi officials have not said whether or not Saddam would be immediately executed if the appeal is rejected, as he is on trial for the Anfal campaign.