Saddam speaks from beyond grave to give orders on genocide

By Ned Parker in Baghdad

Saddam Hussein spoke from beyond the grave when prosecutors played a purported audiotape of his voice yesterday during the trial for the genocide of Iraqi Kurds which resumed in the absence of the hanged dictator.

The seat that he had occupied for 15 months stayed empty as six other defendants took their places in the courtroom. Judge Muhammad al-Oreibi al-Khalifa announced that the court had dropped all charges against him over the 1987-88 military campaign against the Kurds.

Saddam had been on trial for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over his offensive, named Anfal (the spoils of war), which prosecutors claimed killed 182,000 people. But his execution for ordering the deaths of 148 Shias from the village of Dujail in the 1980s brought an end to that case. The charges were dropped under a 1971 law terminating cases against a person who has died, said an official from the office of the Prime Minister.

Yesterday the chief prosecutor, Munqith al-Faroon, played an audiotape in which, he said, the dictator had given approval for using chemical weapons in places crowded with Kurds. “I will take responsibility for using the chemical weapons. No one can direct the strike without my approval,” the purported voice of Saddam was heard saying. “It is better to use this weapon in crowded places to be effective on as many people as possible.

“We have to remove the Kurdish people to other governorates and countries, to end the Kurdish nationality and to stop saboteurs’ acts. We have to allow them to live and work in Tikrit so that they will become Arabs.”

Mr al-Faroon did not reveal when the tape was recorded or to whom Saddam was speaking.The attention now shifts to Saddam’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, called “Chemical Ali” for using chemical weapons as he led the campaign against the Kurds. Mr al-Majid, like Saddam, has been charged with genocide; the five co-accused remaining are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

During yesterday’s session Mr al-Faroon presented a video clip that he claimed showed Mr al-Majid plotting chemical attacks. “I will attack them with chemical weapons,” he was heard shouting twice in the video, which also showed children and women killed by chemical weapons. Mr al-Majid, in military uniform, is shown expressing disdain for world reaction. “To hell with the international community,” he shouts. When the video was played, Mr al-Majid, now an ageing man who walks with a cane, stayed silent.

Some fear that Saddam’s death will undermine the prosecution’s case. On issues such as responsibility for criminal acts, the defendants can now refer all questions to him. “If I were Ali Hassan al-Majid, I’d say I had nothing to do with that, go ask Saddam Hussein,” Joost Hiltermann, of the think-tank International Crisis Group, said.

Yesterday Kurds seemed to have lost interest in the trial that had been their passion when Saddam was alive. “I lost my brother in Anfal. I was watching the trial, but I wanted to see Saddam die at the end of the Anfal trial. Now I don’t want to watch it,” said Nasireen Ahmed, 43, in Kirkuk.