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IRAQ: SADDAM FACES NEW WITNESS DESPITE BOYCOTT THREAT December 6, 2006
Zainab Osman
(SomaliNet) Saddam Hussein is back in court for his genocide trial despite earlier demanding to be excused from a process that he describes as a "mockery". Saddam returned to the courtroom one a day after his lawyers released a handwritten letter, purportedly from the ousted Iraqi leader, asking to be allowed to remain in his cell.
Another witness was presented Wednesday, a hospital doctor who treated victims of Iraqi military poisonous gas attacks.
Faiq Mohammed Ahmed told the court he was working at a Kurdish militia hospital in 1987 when victims of gas attacks were brought in. He went on to describe a steady flow of victims of gas attacks, including an eight-year-old child he was unable to save.
The trial, which began on August 21, has heard more than 70 witnesses, mostly victims of the brutal Iraqi anti-insurgency campaign that swept through the country's Kurdish provinces at the tail end of its war with Iran.
Saddam and his six co-defendants are accused of killing 182,000 Kurds in 1988 when government troops suppressed a Kurdish uprising with artillery, air strikes and poison gas attacks. Saddam was sentenced to death a month ago for brutally murdering 148 Shiites in avenging an assassination attempt by the group in 1982.