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Saddam Hussein genocide trial resumes in Baghdad
21/12/2006 11:01

The trial of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and six codefendants on genocide charges in Anfal case resumed Tuesday with more documents proving chemical attacks against Kurdish villages presented.

On Monday session, the prosecutors presented the court about 25documents, including some letters instructing the army to use "special ammunition", which is believed to refer to chemical weapons, against Kurdish rebels during the Operation Anfal (Spoilsof War) late in 1980s.

Sabir al-Douri, head of Saddam's military intelligence during the 1980s, rejected the accusations by saying that such an attacks were not feasible on the "technical and practical levels."

"I suspect that some of these documents are not authentic," Douri told the court.

During Monday session, Saddam Hussein reiterated that he would shoulder by himself the responsibility for anything that occurred during his regime era, but he did not confess to the charges.

"Any attack whether it was by what so called special ammunition or conventional by any military or civil official who said Saddam Hussein ordered us to do so, I take the responsibility with honor, whether the order came from me or not," Saddam told the court.

Saddam and six of his aides are facing charges of genocide against Kurds in the trial of Anfal case, in which prosecutors said that up to 180,000 Kurds were killed, many of them by poison gas and mass killings.

If convicted, Saddam could get his second death penalty following the first one he got from the trial of Dujail.

On Nov. 5, a panel of five Iraqi judges sentenced Saddam, his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar to death by hanging for killing of 148 people after a failed assassination attempt against Saddam in the town of Dujail, some 60 km north of Baghdad.



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