Saddam in court again after death sentence
Source: Reuters
(Adds Saddam's quotes, witness) By Mussab Al-Khairalla BAGHDAD, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was back in court on Tuesday to face charges of genocide against ethnic Kurds, two days after being sentenced to hang for the killing and torture of Shi'ites. Saddam, who met his death sentence with defiant cries of "God is Greatest!" and "Long live Iraq!" was unusually subdued as he listened to witnesses tell the court how they were detained and shot by Iraqi soldiers in the late 1980s. At one point, the fallen strongman, whose fate is now in the hands of an appellate court reviewing the verdict of his first trial, challenged a witness who took his shirt off to show what he said were scars suffered after being shot on Saddam's orders. "So these people in the cage or some of them carried out the acts directly?" Saddam politely addressed the judge. "When he says there are two officers, what do they look like? Does this bring us to the truth?" Saddam and six former commanders face charges of genocide for their roles in the 1988 Anfal (Spoils of War) military campaign against ethnic Kurds. Prosecutors say up to 180,000 Kurds were killed, many of them by gas. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity for ordering hundreds of Shi'ites killed or tortured in the town of Dujail after an assination attempt in 1982. The ruling sparked condemnation among Sunni Arabs, who say the U.S.-backed court is an instrument of political revenge for Shi'ites and Kurds, persecuted under Saddam's Sunni government but now in power. No execution is likely before next year. After Sunday's dramatic court session, there was great expectation surrounding Saddam's appearance in court on Tuesday. When he was summoned by the judge, Saddam, dressed in a black suit and tieless shirt and smiling faintly, filed into the marbled courtroom, once a palatial office of his Baath party, and made his way quietly to his seat. On Sunday, Saddam first refused to stand up when the judge began reading his verdict. When a guard was ordered to make him get on his feet Saddam shouted: "Don't twist my hand, you fool!" ANFAL WITNESSES Tuesday's somewhat anticlimactic session focused on more testimony from Anfal witnesses. Defense attorneys, who dismissed Saddam's death sentence as "victor's justice" and have criticised the U.S.-backed court as illegitimate, continued their month-old boycott in protest against the government's decision to sack the previous judge. Court-appointed lawyers sat in. Witness Qahar Khalil Mohammad told the court he and other villagers had surrendered to Iraqi soldiers after being promised that Saddam had issued an amnesty. Instead, they were lined up at the bottom of a hill and soldiers opened fire on them. "When they fired in our direction we all fell to the ground," he said, adding he was wounded but managed to survive. "I saw my father and two brothers had been killed as well as 18 of my other relatives," he said.
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