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Little testimony ties Saddam to crackdown
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-05 09:33 Both she and Bhuta from Human Rights Watch believe the best case scenario for
the prosecution would be to produce a senior member of Saddam's regime to
testify against the former ruler and others in exchange for immunity.
Saadoun Shaker, who was interior minister at the time, may be one
possibility. His name was mentioned by a Saddam defense lawyer as a prosecution
witness. Al-Mousawi, the prosecutor, was believed to have been referring to
Shaker when he told the AP last week that a senior official of the former regime
would be among the witnesses.
Al-Mousawi refused to identify the witness and played down his significance.
In theory, Shaker's job should have given him an insight into internal
security matters and authority over the police force. However, testimony given
in court suggested that police were not involved in the Dujail crackdown, with
only Mukhabarat — intelligence — agents, Baath militiamen and elite army units
loyal to the regime.
The absence so far of a "smoking gun" incriminating Saddam has not escaped
his defense lawyers.
"It's all hearsay," said attorney Khamis al-Obeidi. "All witnesses were
children in 1982, some as young as 6. Their testimonies are clearly rehearsed
and don't incriminate President Saddam," he told the AP.
For example, a video filmed the day of the assassination attempt and played
during the trial's first session Oct. 19 only showed the former president
addressing a cheering crowd at Dujail and ordering aides to detain and
interrogate four suspects.
In a disposition videotaped Oct. 23, Wadah Ismael al-Sheik, who led the
interrogations department of the Mukhabarat at the time, said he had not heard
anything directly from Saddam about the Dujail incident.
However, he also said that Saddam decorated Mukhabarat officers, including
himself, who worked on the case. The witness died of cancer shortly after the
recording.
But witnesses maintained that Saddam, as head of state, bore the ultimate
responsibility.
"When a lot of people are jailed and tortured, who takes that decision?" a
witness told the court Dec. 6 after recounting her own torture and imprisonment.
"Was he (Saddam) not the ruler while thousands were jailed and tortured?" asked
another witness the following day.
Saddam, who has often launched into his own defense, varied his tactics in
response to allegations by the witnesses that he was ultimately responsible for
what happened.
"If Saddam was found out to have laid a hand on a single Iraqi, then
everything he (a witness) says is correct," Saddam told the court Dec. 5. "Was
it not the right of Saddam Hussein to have his agencies pursue those who fired
at him?"
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