Posted on 11/28/2006 9:49:33 AM PST by NormsRevenge
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein objected to the testimony of a leading American forensic scientist called in to speak about a mass grave of Kurds, saying Tuesday that only neutral international experts should be permitted at his genocide trial.
Clyde Snow — an expert from the University of Oklahoma who has also investigated mass graves in Argentina, Guatemala and the former Yugoslavia — took the stand and began to give background on his work.
Saddam insisted that Snow should not be allowed to testify because he was American and demanded neutral international experts, suggesting that the bodies in the grave may have been moved to the location from separate locations.
"No one should imagine I'm trying to defend Saddam Hussein, given the earlier sentence against me. You can only be executed once, not 10 times," he said, referring to the death sentence issued against him on Nov. 5 in an earlier trial on charges of killing Shiites. "I'm only trying to defend the truth."
Commenting on the earlier trial, U.N. human rights experts in Geneva said the proceedings did not meet "the relevant international standards" and said Saddam's imprisonment was "arbitrary." The panel, made up of five independent legal experts who report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, stated explicitly that it was not demanding Saddam's release but was recommending "that the serious procedural shortcomings are redressed" by Iraqi and U.S. authorities.
It also said the death penalty should not be carried out.
In Tuesday's proceedings, referring to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled his regime, Saddam proposed that "international experts be brought from countries which are not part of the aggression ... to determine the truth about the mass grave."
" Iraq is full of skeletal remains during the past centuries. Just give me 10 days and I'll show you a grave with 400 bodies, Arabs and Kurds. "The important thing is who is responsible ... Anything can be moved from place to place."
Saddam and his co-defendants have pleaded innocent to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from their role in a military crackdown on Iraq's Kurd population in 1987-88. The prosecution says that about 180,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the campaign against the Kurds, which was code named Operation Anfal.
The chief judge dismissed the complaints, and Snow gave his testimony on the mass grave he investigated in 1992 in the northern Iraqi town of Koreme, as part of a team organized by the groups Physicians for Human Rights and Middle East Rights Watch.
Koreme was destroyed in August 1988, one of "3,800 villages that were destroyed during the Anfal campaign," he said.
Snow said that he was told by survivors that Iraqi forces detained the village's population — about 300 people — and separated out 33 men and boys, who were taken to a location nearby. There, the troops opened fire on them, killing 27, Snow said. Iraqi forces then attacked the village and forced the rest of the population to leave, he said.
Soil samples were taken from craters left by bombardment during the attack, and testing at a British lab found traces of mustard gas and the nerve gas sarin, Snow said.
Snow showed a slide presentation of the 27 bodies his team exhumed in two graves dug next to each other outside the village. Photos showed skeletons laying in the earth, still in their clothes, some with prayer beads or traditional Kurdish belts around them.
He detailed 84 gunshot wounds in the bodies, most of them to the head or upper body.
Snow was the first expert to testify in the Anfal trial, which began on Aug. 21 and until now has been hearing testimony from survivors of the campaign, who told of poison gas attacks on their villages and relatives taken away and killed.
The trial adjourned until Wednesday.
Saddam and his co-defendants, all former officials in his regime, face possible death sentences if convicted on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Saddam and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid — known as "Chemical Ali" because of his alleged use of chemical weapons during the Anfal campaign — also face charges of genocide in the case.
___
Sinan Salaheddin reported from Baghdad and Lee Keath from Cairo, Egypt. Some material in the story came from a pool report at the trial in Baghdad.
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If only we could whack your miserable arse 10 times, it still would not be enough for the monstrosities visited on the peoples of Iraq..
Noted.
Now, on with the execution!
Saddam Hussein, flanked by co-defendants Farhan Mutlag Saleh, left, and Sabir al-Douri, back right, speaks to the court during his resumed trial of genocide against Kurds in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday Nov. 28, 2006. The prosecution says that about 180,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the campaign against the Kurds, which was code named Operation Anfal. (AP Photo/Chris Hondros,Pool)
Two years after his capture and he's still above ground - that's a crime itself.
Well, Snow might be a democrat. Does Saddam know nothing about democrats?
Hahaha Neutral international experts. Good one Saddam. That's about as funny as the Oil for Food program. That Saddam, he's such a cut up.
Tough.
Three years come December 15.
WASTE HIM!!
When he was found he should have been given a MK3A2 as a complementary parting gift and left in his hole.
It looks like Saddams' co-conspiriters are wondering why they didn't take him out when they could.
That's a picture the soldier can show his grand kids.
No, no. No death sentence for this guy. Just send him to Joliet Correctional Center (Joliet, Ill.) for the rest of his life.
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