Saddam's Kurdish genocide trial resumes
Saddam Hussein’s trial on charges of genocide against the Kurds resumed in Baghdad today, four days after an American forensic expert testified that an examination of hundreds of Kurdish remains found in mass graves showed they were gunned down and buried where they fell almost two decades ago.
Saddam and his six co-defendants were present in the court room today.
Michael Trimble, a forensic archaeologist with the US Army Corps of Engineers, described several of the recovered bodies: a pregnant woman shot through her stomach, killing the foetus, a young girl wearing green boots whose leg had been shattered by bullets and an infant apparently smothered under the body of his mother.
Trimble’s account last Thursday was the third consecutive day of testimony by US forensic experts in the trial of Saddam and six co-defendants, who face possible execution if convicted for a 1987/1988 military offensive against the Kurds of northern Iraq.
The prosecution estimates that 180,000 Kurds were killed in the campaign, code-named Operation Anfal, in which Saddam’s army allegedly destroyed hundreds of villages and killed or scattered their inhabitants in a scorched-earth campaign against separatist guerrillas.
Trimble investigated the three mass graves in 2004 on behalf of the Iraqi tribunal prosecuting Saddam and members of his regime.
