Testimony in Saddam trial offers rare, horrifying insights into Life under tyranny

For decades, Iraqis knew — or suspected — what it was like to run afoul of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

This week, however, they heard it first hand from those who lived through it. Nine witnesses offered gripping testimony of life under Saddam, the first Arab leader ever put on trial. The trial was recessed last Wednesday until December 21.

As the drama played out on national television, all the random cruelty, the sadism and the banality of evil was all there — including the recollections of a woman, then 16, known only as "Witness A" to protect her identity.

"I swear to God, I saw a donkey and I said: "Oh God, how I envy him for his freedom. This donkey is lucky. He enjoys complete freedom while we human beings are being moved from prison to a prison."

Saddam and seven co-defendants, including his half brother Barazan Ibrahim, have been accused of killing more than 140 Shiites in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad after a 1982 attempt on his life. They could be hanged if convicted.

For the witnesses, the trial offered an opportunity denied to other Iraqis who suffered under Saddam’s rule: to sit in the same room with the ousted leader and confront him with his alleged crimes. Their stories spoke of lives wrecked, families devastated by the loss of loved ones, death under torture, honours violated and hunger bordering on starvation.

Their delivery was often emotional, interrupted by moments of anger, tears or heart wrenching pleas for God to lend them support. "Can a tragedy be forgotten?" fired back one witness when a defence lawyer questioned whether someone could remember such details allegedly suffered as a child.

In gruesome detail, the witnesses related what they said was sadistic treatment under interrogation. A male witness, whose name also was not made public, told of interrogators placing a pair of clips on his ears. He was told he was hooked up to a lie detector which would send an electric shock through his body every time he failed to tell the truth.

The first jolt came when he replied "I don’t know" to the first question. The practice continued for 30 minutes.

The same witness recalled a detainee who attended the same school but who suffered brain damage as a result of the torture in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad.

"They made us run on a wet surface and when we fell they beat us with hoses," he said. "It would have been better if they had shot us all that day rather than take a single one from the women of Dujail," said Ahmed Hassan Mohammed, one of two witnesses so far who agreed to testify in court without hiding his identity. "They threatened male detainees that they will rape their sisters or wives," he said Monday.

In the five sessions since the trial opened October 19, Saddam appeared unperturbed by the testimony. He lectured chief judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin on patriotism and due process, admonished witnesses. He spoke of himself in the regal third person, often reminding the audience that in his mind, he was still the president of Iraq.

To reinforce the image of Saddam as the leader, his defence team as well as most defendants rose to attention every time he entered the courtroom and referred to him as "Mr. President."

"You with the glasses there, was not I your president and leader for 30 years," he yelled to one bespectacled prosecutor who referred to him as only "Saddam."

His attitude, haughty and steeped in denial, could do little to make the testimonies less compelling, or damning.

One witness, his identity withheld from the public but revealed to the defendants and their defence attorneys, spoke Wednesday of a fellow detainee whose hunger was so intense that he pounded on the door to summon a guard. "We have reached a level of hunger that we should either be given more food or be killed," he quoted the detainee as telling the guard.

The guard then led the prisoner out of the room where he and scores were being held, beat him senseless and threw him back inside.

Later at Abu Ghraib, the same witness recounted, the guards would occasionally bring out detainees at night under the pretext of offering them medical care.

"Some protested that they did not need any treatment, but the guards insisted," he said. "If you say you have a toothache, they will ask you to show them the tooth and they will punch you right there," he said.

(Suzanne Mills is on leave.)