Saddam in court: ‘I am responsible’

Letters as evidence
Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi showed the court handwritten letters said have been sent by three of the defendants days after the assassination attempt, informing on Dujail families linked to the Dawa Party, a Shiite opposition militia accused in the attack.

At least 18 of the people named in the letters, sent to the Interior Ministry, were later sentenced to death. Al-Moussawi said the three men therefore had a direct role in their deaths.

“May my hand be cut off if I gave information against anyone,” defendant Ali Dayih, who allegedly wrote one of the letters, said. “It’s all a frameup.”

Two other defendants — Abdullah Kazim Ruwayyid and his son Mizhar, who, like Dayih, were allegedly local Dujail officials from Saddam’s Baath Party — denied the handwriting on the letters was theirs.

Saddam stood to defend the men, saying that even if the letters were authentic, they were simply notifying authorities. “This was an informing operation, like any policeman when he tells something to his station or any citizen who sees or hears (a crime),” he said.

Al-Moussawi presented lists of vehicles that transported 399 Dujail detainees from a Baghdad facility to a desert prison in southern Iraq in 1984. Each handwritten list included the number of the vehicle, the driver’s name, and the names and ages of the prisoners carried in them — 25-40 of them in each vehicle.

The names included entire families — women with daughters and sons below the age of 10, even the name of a three-month-old girl.

The defendants listened silently as the documents were shown. When they wanted to make a point, they raised their hands, then waited patiently until Abdel-Rahman let them speak.

Saddam: 'I razed the land'
After four hours, Abdel-Rahman was about to adjourn the session, when Saddam interrupted and asked to speak.

He stood and admitted he had ordered the 148 sent to the Revolutionary Court and issued the orders for the Dujail detainees’ palm groves and farms to be confiscated and flattened.

“I referred them to the Revolutionary Court in accordance with the law ... So Awad tried them in accordance to the law — he had the right to try or to acquit,” he said, referring to Awad al-Bandar, the former Revolutionary Court head whose signature was allegedly on the announcement of the death sentences, presented to the court Tuesday.

“I razed the land. I don’t mean I rode a bulldozer and razed it,” he said. “It was a resolution issued by the Revolutionary Command Council,” a regime institution that Saddam headed.

He argued the government had the right to confiscate land for the “national interest” and said he ordered “substantial compensation” be paid to its owners.

“Why are you trying other people? ... The head of state is here, so try him, and let the others go,” he said.

“You mean, Saddam Hussein would say when he was leader, ‘I am responsible,’ then when things get tough, he would say, ‘No, Abdullah was responsible?”’ he said, referring to Ruwayyid. “No, Saddam Hussein would not do that, and you know that.”

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