Saddam trial told of chemical-attack orders and beheading

A court in the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein heard harrowing accounts today that the former Iraqi leader’s forces beheaded a mentally-ill Kurdish man and pushed three other Kurds out of a helicopter in mid-air during a crackdown 20 years ago.

The reports came in classified state documents from Saddam’s officials at the time, presented to the court by chief prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon.

Among them were documents saying Saddam gave “direct orders” to his military intelligence to consider a chemical attack on Iranian forces and allied Kurdish guerrillas.

Saddam’s decree was in response to a suggestion by his military intelligence to use “mustard” gas and other prohibited weapons in aerial attacks on “selected bases of Iranian forces and their agents”, a reference to Kurdish fighters led by Massoud Barzani, now the leader of Iraq’s northern Kurdish region.

Saddam did not explicitly state “chemical weapons”, but referred to “special” ammunition, which prosecutors insist is the term used for mustard or nerve gases used in the 1987/1988 military offensive on Iraq’s Kurdish population, codenamed Operation Anfal.

Prosecutors this week have been presenting Saddam-era documents in the trial of the former Iraqi leader and six former members of his regime.

They face possible death sentences if convicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Anfal campaign, in which an estimated 180,000 Kurds have been killed. Saddam and one other defendant also have been charged with genocide.

The prosecution today showed a March 1987 memo by Saddam’s military intelligence that was circulated to its senior officers, saying: “The president ordered us to study with experts launching a sudden strike on the bases of the (Iranians) and Barzani saboteurs, using the special weapon.”

Subsequent memos confirmed that attacks using “conventional and special weapons” were carried out by 66 warplanes against the designated targets and 10 Kurdish villages.

Other military intelligence documents briefly referred to a “mentally-retarded” Kurdish man, identified as Fatah Mohammad Rasoul, whose head was chopped off by Saddam’s forces. It did not elaborate on the nature of his retardation.

“Our forces cut his head off and brought it back with them, leaving his body in the dirt because he was a saboteur and an agent to Iran,” one of the memos said, giving no further details on the incident.

In a separate incident, three Kurdish men were killed when soldiers “dragged themon to a helicopter, their hands tied. While flying at a high altitude, the three were pushed out, falling to their death,” according to another military intelligence letter.

Al-Faroon, the prosecutor, said three of Saddam’s co-defendants sanctioned the chemical attacks as outlined in some of the classified documents.

He said the defendants were Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam’s cousin, also known as “Chemical Ali”; Taher al-Ani, former head of the northern city of Mosul, and Farhan Saleh, the ex-chief of eastern Iraq’s military intelligence.

In one of the documents, al-Ani confirms to Saddam’s Arab Baath Socialist Party to having “executed some (Kurdish) saboteurs”. The July 1987 document, shown on a television camera in the courtroom, had a signature prosecutors said was al-Ani’s.

Al-Majid, who was in charge of Operation Anfal, wrote back to al-Ani the same month, condoning his executions, according to another document.

“We have no objection to chop off the heads of the traitors, but it would have been better to have had them interrogated, just in case they had useful information to give the security apparatus before being executed,” he said.

The trial is adjourned until Thursday.

Saddam has already been convicted and sentenced to death for the killing of nearly 150 people in the town of Dujail after a 1982 attempt to assassinate him. His lawyers have appealed that trial’s verdict and sentence and the appeals court is expected to rule next month.

Iraqi officials have suggested that Saddam’s prosecution on genocide charges would be halted if the appeals court upholds the death sentence of the first trial.