The first witness to face Saddam Hussein in court told of horrors committed under his rule on Monday, including a human meat grinder, after Saddam's defence team challenged the US-backed trial and briefly walked out.
Ahmed Hassan, a 38-year-old from Dujail, the town where gunmen tried to kill the then Iraqi president in 1982, told the court he and his family were seized after the attack and quizzed under torture.
He said they were taken to an intelligence headquarters in Baghdad run by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and one of eight defendants charged with crimes against humanity in the first trial of members of Iraq's former regime.
After chaotic procedural wrangling, during which former US attorney-general Ramsey Clark led a defence walkout over threats to the lawyers and a challenge to the legitimacy of the court, Hassan's testimony brought the charges chillingly to life.
"I swear by God, I walked by a room and ... saw a grinder with blood coming out of it and human hair underneath," Hassan told the court. During his testimony, Barzan, sitting behind Saddam in the dock, interrupted Hassan, shouting: "It's a lie!"
"My brother was given electric shocks while my 77-year-old father watched," Hassan continued. "One man was shot in the leg ... Some were crippled because they had arms and legs broken.
Saddam is being tried for ordering the killing of more than 140 Shi'ite Muslims from Dujail after the attempt on his life.
Hassan is the first witness to take the stand in the trial, which began on October 19 but has been adjourned twice, first for 40 days to allow the defence more time to prepare and again last week to let two of the defendants find new attorneys following the killing of a second defence lawyer last month.
In his testimony, Hassan, who is technically a plaintiff alongside the state, described seeing Barzan in Dujail on the day of the attack in July 1982, wearing red cowboy boots and blue jeans, and carrying a sniper rifle. He said Saddam was there as well, and related an episode involving a boy of 15.
"Saddam said to him, 'Do you know who I am?'" Hassan said, adding that when the boy answered "Saddam", the president picked up an ashtray and hit him on the head.
As he listened to the testimony, Saddam chuckled and half smiled to himself, but was otherwise impassive.
Hassan is the first of up to 11 witnesses due to testify in the coming days. At least eight of those will be either hidden behind a screen or will not appear on camera to protect their identities, officials familiar with the court have said.
At the last court session on November 28, videotape shot on the day of the assassination attempt, and videotaped testimony given by a witness who has since died were shown to the court.
Hassan's appearance in court, and his sometimes gruesome testimony, followed a near farcical few hours when Saddam's defence team first stormed out of the court and then returned 90 minutes later to challenge its legitimacy.
The walkout was lead by Clark, a veteran defender of unpopular high-profile causes, and was joined by Najeeb al-Nauimi, a former justice minister of Qatar who signed up to Saddam's defence team last month.
The pair returned after receiving assurances that they would be given time to address the court. When they did, they assailed a lack of protection for the defence and impugned the legitimacy of a tribunal originally formed under US occupation. Chief judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin listened and then cut Clark off when five minutes was up, before granting Nauimi 15 minutes.
Nauimi launched into an impassioned indictment of the tribunal, saying it was originally established under US occupation and was therefore illegal under international law.
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