Saddam trial shown gas attack video

“Honourable battles”

 

Faroon said: “I want you to view these dead children because these are the ‘honourable battles’ that Sultan Hashim [a co-defendant] speaks of.”

 

In another shot a dead infant lay on the body of his mother.

 

The grainy video, shot over several days in April 1987 and May 1988, showed helicopters flying low over mountains, villagers fleeing in lorries and refugees on foot.

 

He said: “These were different shots of what were called ‘population centres’ of the victims of chemical bombing.”

 

Faroon also showed the court a memo that praised a Dutch businessman who was convicted in December 2005 for supplying Baghdad with banned chemical weapons.

 

Frans van Anraat was granted Iraqi citizenship on personal orders by Saddam but he fled when Saddam was toppled and was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of complicity in war crimes.

 

“He supplied our institutions … with rare and banned chemical weapons,” read the memo dated 1992 which circulated inside the president’s office.

 

Prosecutors also produced what they said was a top secret memo drawn up by senior generals and addressed to the defence ministry in April 1988, claiming that two attacks had been carried out by “special ammunition”.

 

The memo said: “To carry out the orders of the military deputy commander, two attacks were conducted by the special ammunition.”

 

 

The court convened inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, with Saddam and his co-defendants in the dock for the second consecutive day to listen to documentary evidence about the use of “special ammunition”.

 

Saddam and his co-defendants insist the Anfal campaign was a legitimate counter-insurgency operation against Kurdish separatists at a time when Iraq was at war with Iran.

 

Lawyers for Saddam and the others say the documents have been doctored.

 

Saddam said on Monday that he would take responsibility “with honour” for any attacks on Iran using conventional or chemical weapons during the eight-year war.

 

He has already been sentenced to death for his role in the killing of 148 Shias from the village of Dujail.

 

His lawyers have filed an appeal against the sentence.