Fifteen aides of executed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, including the man known as "Chemical Ali," came back into an Iraqi court on Wednesday for a second day of testimony by survivors of a 1991 Shiite rebellion the accused allegedly crushed ruthlessly.
Witness and former Shiite lawmaker Kamil Kanoun Abu al-Heil, 76, told the Iraqi High Tribunal that he and other villagers had been detained from the Medeina area near the southern city of Basra by Saddam's forces soon after the start of the uprising. "When I entered a room in the prison a man who looks like Hercules in the movies came and asked me my identity. Then he hit me on the head and I fell down," Abu al-Heil said from the witness box.
According to the AP, he said he was put in a caravan from where he could hear the screams of people being tortured. "I was later released because of the presidential pardon, but my life was already destroyed. I was dismissed from the parliament. My cotton was destroyed by the army shelling and my house was damaged," Abu al-Heil recalled.
Al-Heil denied that he was part of the uprising, pointing out that he was a member of Saddam's parliament. "I was part of the regime. No way I could have participated in the uprising," he said.
In the middle of Wednesday's session, chief judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa ordered former Republican Guards commander Maj. Gen. Iyad Fathi al-Rawi to leave the courtroom "for not sticking to the rules of the court."
The judge then ordered the defendants not to talk to each other or sit cross-legged. Half an hour later, he dismissed former defense minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai for the same reason.
Al-Tai asked what he had done before leaving and the judge replied, "you know what you have done."
On Tuesday, at the start of the trial, two other witnesses told stories of how they or their relatives were allegedly beaten and murdered by Saddam's forces during the crushing of the rebellion.
The 1991 Intifada (Uprising) Trial is the third to be held by the Iraqi High Tribunal. Prosecutors charge that up to 100,000 Shiites were killed when Saddam loyalists put down the uprising.
