Saddam appears in genocide trial

Saddam Hussein was in court on Wednesday for his genocide trial despite earlier demanding to be excused from a process that he described as a “mockery”.

The deposed Iraqi president’s lawyers released a handwritten letter, purportedly from him, asking to be allowed to remain in his cell.

“I request you excuse me from attending the sessions of this latest mockery,” the letter said.

The prosecutor asked the judge on Tuesday to end the witness phase of testimony, but a hospital doctor who treated victims of Iraqi military gas attacks was presented as a witness on Wednesday.

Faiq Mohammed Ahmed told the court he was working at a Kurdish militia hospital in 1987 when victims of gas attacks were brought in.

“The patient’s eyes were tearing up and his face was red and he had difficulty breathing,” said the doctor, adding that the patient was effectively blind and had to be helped into the examination room.

“After diagnosing the patient, I knew the man had been hit with mustard gas.”

Law and disorder

The trial, which began on August 21, has heard more than 70 witnesses, mostly victims of the brutal Iraqi campaign that swept through the country’s Kurdish provinces at the end of its war with Iran in 1988.

Saddam and his six co-defendants are accused of killing 182,000 Kurds when government troops suppressed a Kurdish uprising with artillery, air strikes and poison gas attacks.

On Monday, the court heard a testimony from Abdel Qader Abdullah, a former Kurdish fighter who lost 22 members of his family in a gas attack.

“I saw a woman lying on her face near a stream,” he said. “When I turned her over I discovered she was my mother. I wanted to kiss her, but I knew I could be infected by the chemicals”.

Saddam has already been sentenced to death for his role in the execution of 148 Shias from the village of Dujail in revenge for an assassination attempt in 1982.

Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has said he expects Saddam to be hanged before the end of the year.

Al Jazeera + agencies