Iraq: Saddam Hussein told his trial yesterday that he had been beaten in US custody and, in an extraordinary outburst towards the end of the hearing, he also said that those who had tortured Iraqis should be punished for their crimes.
The former Iraqi president spent most of the session sitting quietly in the dock as prosecution witnesses told the court of the beatings and abuse they and other former detainees say they suffered in Saddam's jails.
Late in the hearing, however, the man who ruled Iraq for a quarter of a century rose to his feet and told the judge that he had been abused by US forces since his arrest in late 2003. "I have been hit by the Americans and tortured," he said, speaking purposefully. "I have been beaten on every place of my body, and the signs are all over my body."
Then, in one of the more conciliatory statements he has made during the trial, he said that those guilty of the alleged torture described by the witnesses should be punished, apparently distancing himself from the accusations.
"When I hear that any Iraqi has been hurt, it hurts me too," the 68-year-old former president said. "The wrongs that were done to those people were wrong and, according to law, those who did it should get what they deserve."
The court heard earlier from three witnesses who made some of the most coherent, specific and at times chilling allegations yet against Saddam's followers. One witness told how guards in Saddam's intelligence service heated up plastic tubing and allowed the hot plastic to drip on to the bodies of victims.
A second said he was given electric shocks. While he screamed in agony in the torture chamber at the headquarters of the intelligence service in Baghdad, Saddam's half-brother and former intelligence chief, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, ate grapes and watched, the witness said.
The third witness said that Saddam's guards had attached electrodes to his hands, feet and penis and gave him electric shocks before pulling out his fingernails and toenails.
Saddam and seven co-defendants, including Barzan, are charged with crimes against humanity relating to the killing of 148 people from the Shia village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982.
While previous witnesses have given sometimes rambling accounts of their hardships under Saddam, the first witness yesterday, Ali Hassan al-Haidari, was precise. He said Barzan had kicked him once as he lay in the hallway of a jail while he was suffering from a fever, and he recalled the agony of those who, he said, had had molten plastic dripped on to them.
"They would be in such pain as the plastic solidified on their bodies," he said. "A man would leave on his feet and come back thrown in a blanket."
He said that even if Saddam was not directly involved in the torture, he must have ordered it.
After hearing about six hours of testimony, Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin adjourned the proceedings until today, when he is expected to call two more prosecution witnesses. - (Reuters)