IRAQ: Prosecutors in trial of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein show video of victims fleeing chemical attack in 1978 / More than 50 bodies found across Iraq as sectarian violence continues

Prosecutors in the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for genocide against ethnic Kurds on Tuesday (December 19) showed footage allegedly showing villagers fleeing their homes after chemical attacks in 1978. Chief prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon said the footage "shows the villages, known as the modern villages for victims of the gas attack and families fleeing and helicopters hovering above the villages." Faroon said the video footage was shot in several areas that were bombed with mustard gas. Faroon, attempting to implicate Saddam and his six co-defendants for the Anfal (Spoils of War) campaign, showed the court an internal memo that praised Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat for his role in providing banned weapons. Anraat was convicted in December 2005 for supplying Baghdad with banned chemical weapons that were used in the offensive that prosecutors say killed more than 180,000 Kurds. After he was granted Iraqi citizenship on personal orders by Saddam, van Anraat fled Iraq after the dictator was toppled and in December 2005 was convicted and 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. Saddam said on Monday he would take responsibility "with honour" for any attacks on Iran using conventional or chemical weapons during the eight-year war. Elsewhere in Baghad on Tuesday (December 19) people collected the bodies of their relatives from a morgue. The bodies were of people who represent the latest victims of sectarian violence. Source at Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital said the hospital's morgue received some 44 bodies found with gunshot wounds in different parts of the Iraqi capital over the past day. Many of the bodies had been bound and tortured. Bodies are sent for burial every three or four days to make room for the daily intake. While no one knows how many Iraqis have died, daily tallies of violent deaths average nearly 45 a day. About half of them are unidentified bodies discovered on city streets. Meanwhile, a total of 12 bodies, including two women, were found in different parts of the religiously mixed city of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. Discoveries of mutilated bodies have become almost a daily occurrence since the bombing in February this year of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a revered Shi'ite shrine, ignited Iraq's sectarian tensions.

ITN Source | December 19, 2006

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