Memo ties Saddam to gas attacks, say prosecutors
Source: Reuters
By Ahmed Rasheed BAGHDAD, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Prosecutors at Saddam Hussein's genocide trial produced documents on Wednesday they said showed he ordered his intelligence services to study launching chemical attacks against ethnic Kurds and Iran. Saddam and six others are on trial for the Anfal (Spoils of War) campaign against ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s in which prosecutors say up to 180,000 people were killed in gas attacks and mass executions. "Mr. President ordered our office to study with experts launching a sudden strike on bases of (Ayatollah) Khomeini's guards and Barzani saboteurs using special ammunition," chief prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon read from what he said was a March 1987 internal memo by Saddam's military intelligence. Masoud Barzani is president of Iraq's Kurdish region. Chemical weapons, including sarin and mustard gas, are known as "special ammunition" Saddam, already sentenced to death in a separate trial for crimes against humanity over the killing of Shi'ites, has argued that Anfal was a legitimate military operation against Kurdish militias who sided with Iran in the Iraq-Iran war. On Monday, Saddam said he would take responsibility "with honour" for any attacks on Iran using conventional or chemical weapons but took issue with charges he ordered Iraqis attacked. With the witness phase of the trial over, prosecutors are turning to documentary evidence to pin Saddam down to crimes committed during Anfal, where hundreds of mountain villages were bombed and gassed. The court has seen footage of dead civilians including infants apparently with chemical burns. At one point during Wednesday's hearing, Saddam smiled when prosecutors read a document in which the northern Baath party headquarters recommended to troops led by Saddam's feared cousin and co-defendant Ali Hassan al-Majid -- nicknamed "Chemical Ali" -- not to behead captives before they were questioned. "We have no problem with the beheadings of traitors, but it would have been better to bring them to the security headquarters so they can be interrogated and we can extract information before we execute them," the memo said.
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